It is not a secret. But when the Maglia Milanese Monete Secret Watch was presented today at the opening of the LVMH Watch Week, few people knew that Bvlgari has a century-long history of making such watches.
“Secret watches are part of our heritage,” said Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Product Creation Executive Director at Bvlgari Horlogerie SA. But this is a completely new watch, with a new case and a new Milanese bracelet,” he continued about the watch whose first sketches were drawn five to six years ago.
Bvlgari is a brand that ever since its inception in 1884 has played with pure geometric shapes. “I love that when you open the octagonal cover, you see the round-shaped bezel on a square back drop,” said Mr. Buonamassa Stigliani, adding that the engraved rays on the rose gold case emphasize these strong geometries.
One for The Money
Monete is an old Roman word for money, which obviously refers to the authentic ancient coin from 198–297 AD depicting Emperor Caracalla. In more recent times this reflects back to the mid-1960s, when coin collector Gianni Bulgari incorporated coins into the jewelry collection Monete. Mr. Buonamassa Stigliani revealed that Bvlgari’s first watch with a coin came around 2010, when one of its most important clients wanted a unique secret watch with a coin.
But Mr. Buonamassa Stigliani refuses to put the Maglia Milanese Monete Secret Watch into the tradition of coin watches, where a coin forms the dial. This can be seen in vintage pieces from, for instance, Corum, Rolex and Patek Philippe. “Those watches have a completely different approach. When you make holes in the coin to put in the hands et cetera, you destroy the value of the coin. We protect the coins that Romans used with a rubber gasket. And to have something in our hands that is more than 2,000 years old is impressive, and makes this watch a real time machine.”
The Milanese mesh bracelet in gold, a first for Bvlgari, took more than a year to develop. It must have the right thickness and the right connection to the case. “A lot of small details that take a long time to develop, explained Mr. Buonamassa Stigliani of the creation made of interlaced gold threads. To him the secret is to find the right balance between the case and the bracelet, to make sure the watch sits on the wrist in a balanced way. “This Milanese bracelet is just the beginning. I love that it is so smooth, it feels like leather, but it is made in metal,” he said of the 2.10-millimeter-thick bracelet made by a supplier.
The Maglia Milanese Monete is powered by the Piccolissimo BVP100. The caliber with 102 components and a match weight of a mere 1.9 grams, is designed and produced entirely by Bvlgari in Le Sentier, in the Swiss Jura. Thus, the Maglia Milanese Monete Secret Watch, often referred to as Monete for short, sums up the brand more than any other timepiece in the current collection: “Bvlgari is as much a Roman goldsmith as a Swiss watchmaker,” said Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani.
