Today, we are on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the AP Royal Oak and I couldn’t think of a better time to talk about this watch and what made it so iconic. When the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Jumbo was launched on April 15th, 1972, AP decided to be as bold with the marketing strategy to present the watch as they were by hiring genius designer Gérald Charles Genta to design a luxury watch that would be an all-around watch and that would break all the rules in watchmaking. At the time, Audemars Piguet was only producing 8,000 watches a year and had 70 employees.
Other than the design itself, there are many other things that make the Royal Oak Jumbo so unique. From its case construction to the material of its case, the communication, and even the way it was designed, the Royal Oak was destined to become an icon and have other brands follow. The first batch of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak included 1,000 pieces —400 for the Italian market, 400 for the Swiss market, and 200 for the rest of the world— and it was priced at CHF 3,650 Swiss Francs —today it would be around CHF 9,500 Swiss Francs— making it the most expensive steel sports watch ever marketed. Literally, steel at the price of gold.
The First Luxury Watch in Stainless Steel and Also Oversized
The Royal Oak Jumbo ref. 5402ST was the first ‘true’ luxury watch —Rolex was not a luxury timepiece at the time— to be released in stainless steel and with an oversized case. The watch was nicknamed ‘Jumbo’ since, for the era, a watch case measuring 39 mm in diameter had never been seen or heard of when it comes to luxury timepieces.
The Royal Oak was Designed Overnight
On the eve of the 1971 Basel Fair, Audemars Piguet’s Managing Director Georges Golay called Gérald Genta asking him to design an “unprecedented steel watch” for the Swiss and Italian markets. The design had to be completed overnight as Golay had to present it to distributor Carlo De Marchi —AP’s most important distributor at the time.
In Golay’s mind, the watch had to be modern, unique and an all-around watch that men could wear while driving, boating, or for formal occasions. In reality, there was nothing out there at the time that would tick all the boxes.
Genta found the inspiration for the Royal Oak from a childhood memory where he pictured himself at the Pont de la Machine in Genève while looking at a diving helmet on a man’s head. He remembered how eight nuts and a rubber gasket held the visor in place to protect the diver. And so it was born that night. The Royal Oak would feature s similar construction with an octagonal bezel and eight hexagonal bolts as well as an integrated bracelet that would flow from the case without any removable end links.
Image from Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Book
The Monobloc Case Construction with Octagonal Bezel and Hexagonal Screws
Additionally, in Genta’s mind, the watch had to be water-resistant in order to be worn anywhere as this was meant to be a watch suited for any situation. Therefore, he decided to make sure the watch had no opening on the case back and the case would be a monobloc case —one-piece construction rather than the usual tripartite in most watches— with only the top part being accessible, pretty much like the diver’s helmet where its inspiration comes from.
Image from Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Book
The octagonal bezel is held in place by eight hexagonal crossing screws that are encrusted onto the bezel and that connect to eight round screw tubular caps on the back of the case. Additionally, the rubber gasket is a true seal that sits around the interior of the case and over the top part of the case right in between the case and the octagonal bezel. The crown followed the design of the hexagonal screws. The octagonal bezel features a beveled design with alternating satin-brushed and polished areas.
The Dial with Tapisserie
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak blends modern design cues with traditional watchmaking techniques, as is the case of the dial with a guilloché motif. The dial on the Royal Oak features a ‘Clous de Paris’ guilloché motif that is referred to by AP as ‘petite tapisserie’.
To make the dial, it all begins with a brass plate. The brass plate is engraved by a burin —a precision metalwork chisel— that reproduces the motif on a disc attached to the machine, like a pantograph. A pointer rotates across the disc from the periphery to the center. The color of the original Royal Oak Jumbo from 1972 is a cobalt blue with a sunburst effect and further enhanced by a smoke-tinted treatment. The dial on the Royal Oak Extra-Thin Jumbo ref. 15202ST is as close as possible to the color on the original Royal Oak from 1972.
The system is combined with a tool that forms the little lozenges between the pyramidal squares and takes between 20 and 50 minutes, depending on the dial's diameter. It's a delicate operation. A mere skip is all it takes to damage the piece as the slightest impact is as visible as dust on a mirror.
Its Name That Came Out of Nowhere
When Georges Golay presented the design to the Swiss and Italian distributors the Royal Oak had not been named yet. Internally, the watch had been named the ‘Safari’ because it evoked the desert and adventures but most likely because of its all-around nature and the ability to wear such luxury watch everywhere including an African safari. A whole year passed before the prototypes were completed and the watch still had no name.
Finally, just in time for the 1972 Basel Fair, the watch was presented under the ‘Royal Oak’ name after Carlo de Marchi —the Italian distributor— suggested such a name. It is suggested that the name is directly linked to the English tree that sheltered King Charles II of England where he hid amid the branches of an oak tree after losing the Battle of Worcester, but also to the English ships of the British Navy named HMS Royal Oak.
The Integrated Bracelet
Much like a supple joint mirroring the spine of a seahorse, the bracelet is made up of a juxtaposition of small parts graduated by decreasing size. An exemplary configuration and the ideal model to hold the case firmly in place while providing complete freedom for wrist movements. The sophisticated construction of the Royal Oak bracelet uses parts that are all different in size. Arranged in diminishing order so as not to weigh down the watch, they are graduated into seven different sizes, alternating bracelet links, and connecting studs. Each of these parts is meticulously machined, pierced, polished, and checked in order to fit together perfectly with no gaps or unevenness.
After trimming, polishing and brushing, the links are initially assembled in their definitive order. Another operation transforms this 'staircase', achieved by the gradually diminishing length of the parts, into a double symmetrical curve. The intermediate studs are then placed and the assembly shanks are driven in before soldered at the tips. The soldered tips are perfectly invisible on the edges of the bracelet.
Then come the screwed extension pieces. The tips of the shanks are pre-cut before the final cutting which makes them invisible. Assembled at last, the bracelet is fitted with a folding clasp before undergoing the final hand-crafted operations of polishing the bevels and the intermediate studs, satin-brushing the sides and the faces of the links.
This alternating pattern of polished and satin-brushed surfaces are unmistakable attributes of the Royal Oak bracelet making it the most comfortable and beautiful bracelet in the watch world.
A Very Bold Marketing Strategy
The first bold advertisement for the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak read:
“A tribute to steel. Discerning men of action are no longer satistied with a run-of-the-mill watch. Always an the move, they demand something more; a perfect timepiece, in complete harmony with the multiple activities of their fast moving lives. For this elite the artist-craftsmen of AUDEMARS PIGUET have created ROYAL OAK a tribute to steel, the metal of the twentieth century more difficult to fashion than fine gold and so made infinitely precious by the exquisite quality of the work. Through the nobility of its lines, through its very special cachet, each of the rare and individually numbered examples of ROYAL OAK is a pinnacle of the watchmaker's art, worthy of the name AUDEMARS PIGUET.”
Then other advertisements followed the same bold strategy for at least a couple decades and my favorite taglines include the following:
'“Some Things in Life Speak for Themselves.”
“It Takes More than Money to Wear the Royal Oak.”
“A Price Like that, he teased, and They Don’t Conceal the Bolts?”
“Introducing Steel at the Price of Gold.”
