Patek Philippe has just launched its first new collection in 25 years

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It will be a big deal if Patek Philippe releases one of its watches with a new dial color or new metal. In fact, Patek Philippe is so important to watchmaking that the maison will make revolutionary news if it simply decides to stop making a clock. This makes it difficult to quantify the magnitude of today’s announcement from Patek Philippe. For the first time in 25 years, since the launch of the Twenty~4 women’s watch in 1999, the watchmaker has debuted a new collection called Cubitus.

Patek Philippe’s impact on the world of haute horlogerie – “haute horlogerie” – is difficult to overstate. A member, along with Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin, of what collectors call the “Holy Trinity,” she led even those august maisons with innovations that we now take for granted. In 1941, he launched the reference 1526, the first mass-produced perpetual calendar wristwatch in the world. As if that weren’t enough, the world’s first mass-produced perpetual calendar wristwatch combined with a chronograph bearing the reference 1518 simultaneously debuted. It took the rest of the watchmaking world around 50 years to produce a similar timepiece.

Jean-Daniel Meyer

The roots of Cubitus

In 1976, after decades of complicated pocket and wristwatch production, Patek rewrote the rulebook with the introduction of the Nautilus. Conceived by famed watch designer Gérald Genta, this “luxury sports watch” helped – along with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Vacheron Constantin 222 – usher in the era of high-quality stainless steel time and date watches. While dedicated tool watches like the Rolex Submariner and Omega Seamaster have, for two decades, fulfilled the goal of providing robust, accurate timekeeping in all conditions, the “luxury sports watch” was about elevating stainless steel to the level of precious metal. In fact, an old Nautilus advertisement proudly stated, “One of the most expensive watches in the world is made of steel.” Luxury sports watches like the Nautilus are today the most popular pieces among collectors.

Over time, the Nautilus became one of the most desired watches on the planet. Escaping its stainless steel origins, it was offered in precious metals and featured complications ranging from chronographs to perpetual calendars. However, it was for a long time the simplest model with a stainless steel date and time, the reference 5711, which not only captured the collective imagination of the watchmaking world, but also permeated the larger zeitgeist and became a pop culture icon in its own right. own. When it was announced in 2021 that Patek was discontinuing the 5711, it came as a shock. What other watchmaker would dare to put its most popular watch out of production?