Watch enthusiasts have just been hit by impressive string of records. One after the other, what already looked like irreducibly thin designs have been further pared down by the major watch companies, apparently driven by a conquering spirit such as we have rarely witnessed before in this field. Mechanical hand-wound or self-winding watches, equipped with tourbillons or minute repeaters: in all these fundamental categories of contemporary watch, the slimming diet has been both drastic and very fast. One might almost wonder whether the resulting timepieces might not end up with a vitamin deficiency. At the very least they are liable to have caused some severe episodes of hypoglycaemia and dizziness among the public, since most of these wasp-waisted watches are breathtakingly beautiful.
There is of course the technical factor. Making watches slimmer is an authentic challenge that involves pushing the limits of resistance, architecture and component production. An undeniable driving force behind progress in the watch industry, this approach reaches its ultimate degree of complexity in the tourbillon category – for which the current record-holder is Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo Tourbillon with its 1.95 mm calibre! Nonetheless, the achievement far exceeds the field of mechanics alone, since the movement is not the be-all and end-all and the case must also be slimmed down in order to make the watch thinner. Bulgari has achieved a truly impressive design feat, since the complex new-look Octo case, composed of 110 facets and several stacked layers, has been perfectly preserved while now measuring just 5 mm in thickness. The effect on the wrist is certainly striking.
Reducing the case thickness means revisiting the very way in which the watch is designed. Piaget therefore decided to do away with a standard case back housing the traditional “sandwich-type” watch construction. In the case of the Altiplano 900P, the mainplate serves as the case-back, machined on the inside to house the components. This original approach, in parallel with other miniaturisation efforts, makes this the slimmest mechanical watch currently available, at just 3.65 mm in all. But creating an ultra-thin watch is no good if it turns out to be excessively fragile, and Piaget accordingly undertook to consolidate its 900P: the movement actually connects with the sapphire crystal via the underside in order to form a pillar that protects it from breakage; and the mainplate/caseback is thick enough to prevent it from twisting.
An ultra-thin watch is however much more than a compilation of records, figures and competition. In the real world, where watches are worn on the wrist, this watchmaking style also spells the greatest elegance. A form of elegance that is all about watches that are discreet to the point of remaining virtually out of sight. This is a strong trend reversal: after years of vying to have the thickest and largest possible watch in order to impress others, one can now shine in public with a very small, very slim watch.
Models are now so slim that it has become pretty hard to tell the difference. Who could be certain which is thicker once on the wrist: a 43 mm-diameter, 5.25 mm thin Altiplano, or a 5.40 mm Breguet Classique 5157? These two models are competitors for the title of the thinnest mechanical self-winding watch and there is just 0.15 mm between them. Does it show? Does it matter? We can expect to see a truce in the battle of figures. Announcing too many records can prove counter-productive and there is a threshold that is no longer worth crossing… unless…
