Audemars Piguet | The Royal Oak 50th birthday

The Royal Oak is one of the most famous watchmaking icons whose stories have become myths. While the birth of this timepiece proved difficult, the tenacity of two men ensured its success.

In 1970, three major distributors of Audemars Piguet made a specific request for a steel watch that was both sporty and elegant, in line with the lifestyles of the time. This request led to the creation of the Royal Oak. Georges Golay, a visionary who was running the company at the time, took up the challenge even though it seemed extremely risky. He commissioned Gérald Genta, a designer and jeweller by training who had already collaborated with the brand, to design “a steel sports watch that has never been done before”. The watch, not yet called Royal Oak, was born on his drawing board overnight. He was inspired by a diver’s helmet to create something unprecedented: an octagonal monocoque case with eight visible screws; a visible water-resistance gasket; a dial composed of hundreds of small truncated pyramids, a bracelet evoking the facets of a diamond, and finally, steel treated like a precious metal thanks to exceptional finishing.

10 April 1970, the day before the Basel Fair
The birth of the Royal Oak is closely linked to the Basel Fair, held annually in April, which at the time was the watch industry meeting place. Brands, agents and distributors from around the world converged there for ten days to discover new products, share their opinions, talk about the future, explore new horizons and cultivate friendships over cigars and good wine. Above all, distributors placed orders for the coming year, thus enabling manufacturers to establish or fine-tune their production plans.

In 1970, the fair officially opened on 11 April, but many distributors arrived in the city before the opening. Some of them took advantage of the opportunity to make a side-trip to Milan, the international capital of fashion, to take in the latest trends.

Thus, on 10 April 1970, Georges Golay met with Carlo de Marchi (Italomega, Turin), Charles Bauty (Gameo, Lausanne) and Charles Dorot (Bradt Frères, Paris):  three sales agents operating for the SSIH group, with which Audemars Piguet had signed an agreement to expand its distribution network. Verbal sources agree that it was then that the “three musketeers” challenged the Managing Director of Audemars Piguet to create what would become the Royal Oak. We do not know the exact content of the dialogue, but in an interview from February 1982, Georges Golay explained: “The Royal Oak was conceived in 1970, at the suggestion of general agents who had reservations about the marketing value of gold alone for the promotion of high-prestige timepieces – a view which I believe is no longer valid. They did ask us to design a stainless steel wristwatch more in tune with the way we live today. We had to invent a model both sporty and stylish in spirit, suitable for evening wear and for the daily activities of today’s man of taste.” What the Managing Director might have added was that the powerful agents also needed a watch that was produced in sufficient quantities to supply their most prestigious outlets.

Gérald Genta, an emerging figure in a new profession
In April 1970, Italian-born designer Gérald Genta was 38 years old. This trained jeweller had a strong personality and was no stranger to the watchmaking world, but he had not yet achieved the fame that would later earn him the “Picasso of Watches” nickname. He had not yet designed Patek Phillipe’s Nautilus (1976), revisited IWC’s Ingenieur (1976) or created the Bvlgari Bvlgari (1977). He had however sold hundreds of watch designs to numerous brands since the 1950s, including designing Universal’s Pole Router (1954) and revisiting Omega’s Constellation (1959).

Collaboration between Audemars Piguet and Genta
Gérald Genta mentioned having sold his first designs to Audemars Piguet in the 1950s. The designer’s name appears in the brand’s archives in 1960, alongside several models combining geometrical shapes in a refined manner, such as Model 5179, the asymmetrical 5182 and the 5199, which plays on textures and shapes.

Over the course of the 1960s, the relationship between Genta and Audemars Piguet grew stronger, based on shared values and sensibilities. And it was between 1967 and 1971 that they reached its highest level of intensity. In 1969, 1970 and 1971, Audemars Piguet commissioned Genta to travel to the Basel Fair. Genta said that in addition to welcoming clients on the small AP booth to introduce them to the new products, he was responsible for installing the watches in the display cases and dismantling the latter at the end of the show. Thus, when Georges Golay phoned Gérald Genta on 10 April 1970, they may well have been staying in nearby hotels.

A steel sports watch that has never been done before
Genta was to remember the “4 pm” call from Georges Golay for the rest of his life. He quoted the Managing Director of AP who – with all his powerful intonation, natural authority and beautiful accent from the Vallée de Joux – said: “Mr. Genta, we have a distribution company that has asked us for a steel sports watch that has never been done before – and I need the design sketch for tomorrow morning.”

The designer immediately set to work on his drawing board. He explained: “I incorrectly understood him to have said “whose water-resistance has never been done before”… I remembered as a child having seen a diver being fitted with a helmet on Geneva’s Pont de la Machine. I was very impressed when I saw the eight bolts and the rubber seal designed to protect a person’s life under water. I was tempted to fit a highly prestigious movement inside a case entirely recalling the diver’s helmet. Furthermore, I designed the integrated bracelet which was unprecedented, with tapering intermediate links that made it extremely hard to produce; the dial with hands and hour-markers delicately inlaid with luminous material; the sunburst cobalt blue dial base adorned with Clous de Paris guilloché pattern, complete with a smoky effect as the shade would otherwise have been slightly commonplace.”

From idea to case prototype
On 11 April 1970, while Gérald Genta was installing the watches in the windows of the tiny Audemars Piguet booth at the Basel Fair, George Golay presented his sketches. Carlo de Marchi and his companions were won over.

When the Managing Director told Genta the good news, the latter made an unusual request: “This is so special that I would like to monitor the making of the prototype. Please tell me which company I will need to visit.” He later explained: “I had a very precise idea in my head and I knew what I wanted to do.” The approach was unusual in that Jacques-Louis Audemars – grandson of the co-founder of Audemars Piguet and Chairman of the Board of Directors at the time – was not only in charge of production but also personally managed all new developments.

Genta first went to the small watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds to discuss the project with watch case manufacturer Favre & Perret. This company founded in 1865 was specialised in gold watch cases and jewellery. It had never worked with steel. While the fact that Georges Golay had imposed such a partner surprised the designer, this choice was entirely judicious, since fine workmanship, top-of-the-range decorations and craftsmanship were the core values of this traditional firm.

On 16 June 1970, four prototypes were ordered from Favre-Perret in a letter that interestingly – and in a rare occurrence – bore the letterhead of Audemars Piguet but was signed by Gérald Genta, despite the fact that he was never an Audemars Piguet employee and always proclaimed his independence. Moreover, the letter requests an offer for 1,000 watches in steel and 100 in gold. These were quantities unheard of at Audemars Piguet.

Creation of the dial
While the tapisserie dial is one of the most important aesthetic codes of the Royal Oak, it would not have seen the light of day without a surprising conjunction of circumstances.

It all began when, around 1970, a Geneva-based company called La Nationale lost its only employee capable of operating seven old machines that were about to fall into disuse. These engraving machines, or more precisely “guilloché copying” machines, had been used for decades to reproduce geometric or floral tapisserie patterns on gold lighters, pens or cigarette boxes in silver, gold, etc. Wishing to dispose of these tools, La Nationale handed them over to its neighbour, the dial-maker Stern Frères, on condition that they fulfil an existing order. Stern was nothing less than the most prestigious dial manufacturer of the 20th century. It supplied the greatest watch brands, including Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet.

Roland Tille was the Stern Frères head of design at the time. He understood the potential of these old tools, despite the great difficulty involved in using them. When Gérald Genta visited him to talk about the future Royal Oak, Tille showed him not only the machines, but also the 300 templates that came with them, each featuring a different design. The two men chose 13 designs to make prototypes, including one called T21, standing for “Tapisserie 21”. That was the one chosen for the Royal Oak.

Now renamed Petite Tapisserie, this pattern is composed of hundreds of small truncated pyramids, punctuated by tens of thousands of small diamond-shaped holes, enabling subtle and unique light effects.

Calibre 2121
To equip the future Royal Oak, Audemars Piguet and Gérald Genta chose the world’s thinnest mechanical selfwinding movement with date: the famous Calibre 2121 derived from the 2120. At 3.05mm thick and 12½ lignes (28mm) in diameter, this now legendary calibre corresponds to what watchmakers colloquially call a tracteur (tractor), in that it combined power with reliability and resistance, despite its extreme thinness.

Calibre 2120 was born in 1967 from the collaboration of three renowned companies, which by then had forged close links in terms of both production and distribution: LeCoultre & Cie, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin.

First bracelets made by Gay Frères
The Royal Oak bracelet designed by Genta was far from the first integrated steel bracelet. It was however the most complex ever made from this material and featured 154 components, among which 34 were of different sizes.

To make such an achievement possible, Audemars Piguet turned to one of the greatest specialists: the Geneva-based company Gay Frères. Founded in 1835 by Jean-Pierre Gay and Gaspar Tissot, this company initially specialised in chains but reconverted to watch bracelets in the 20th century. In the 1970s, Gay Frères was the undisputed master of steel bracelets. Its Geneva workshops employed more than 500 people, five times more than Audemars Piguet.

Despite their experience and the quality of their tools, the Gay Frères artisans were never able to attain the level of Audemars Piguet’s finishing requirements. Thus, like the cases produced by Favre-Perret, each bracelet had to be reworked manually by the Le Brassus watchmakers during the casing-up process. Even after the 1972 launch, several improvements had to be made to achieve the expected degree of quality and ergonomics, in particular to ensure the perfect tapering of the links attached to the case.

Presentation of the first prototype in Basel
By April 1971, a full year had passed since Genta’s first sketch. As the Basel Fair was about to open, Georges Golay took advantage of the presence of the “three musketeers” to discreetly introduce them to the future Royal Oak’s white gold prototype. It was immediately clear that Audemars Piguet had something which would create a stir! Carlo de Marchi and Charles Bauty each agreed to buy 400 units, making a total of 800 watches. Georges Golay decided to produce a first series of 1,000 in steel, assuming that it would be easy to distribute the 200 additional examples to the rest of the world. The development took another year and was done without Gérald Genta.

An entrepreneur at heart, Genta had long wanted to step out of the shadows and create his own brand. In 1969, he had already taken a first step in this direction. Relations with Audemars Piguet ended in 1972 when Gérald Genta presented in Basel the first model from his brand: a wooden watch with a bezel punctuated by 13 gold screws.

A limited edition of 1,000
On 19 May 1971, Jacques-Louis Audemars signed an order for 1,000 steel cases from Favre-Perret. This was the largest quantity of a single model ever ordered by Audemars Piguet. To better understand what such a figure represents, one should recall that in 1971, the 6,217 watches sold by AP were available in 237 very different models and that each model was itself interpreted in a multitude of different dials and materials. Only 23 models were produced in quantities of more than 100, while 145 models had less than 10 units each, 55 of which were one-offs.

We now know that the first Royal Oak, Model 5402, was produced in a run of over
6,000 watches. However, back in 1971, the idea of making even 1,000 of them was perceived as excessive and even shocking by certain craftspeople in Le Brassus.

First AP watch with a name
Naming a new watch is always a tricky process. The name must convey values, evoke a history, a character, a rich and relevant semantic universe, yet it must also be memorable and pronounceable throughout the world. For Audemars Piguet in 1971, the search for a name was further complexified by the fact that the brand had never done this for any previous series-made watch. Until then, the only element of recognition was the model reference number or the nickname given by collectors.

On 13 September 1971, the question of the name was still far from resolved and it was until 2 December 1971 that the name Royal Oak appeared in the brand’s archives.

All the witnesses of the time agree that the Italian agent Carlo de Marchi came up with the name which referred to the Royal Oak ships of the Royal Navy, the most recent of which were armoured in metal. It was also a nod to the story of Charles II, King of England, who owed his life to an oak tree that had sheltered him from Cromwell’s troops and which he subsequently ennobled. “Royal Oak” opens the door to countless interpretations, carrying connotations of equestrian and naval battles, the conquest of the oceans, treasures hidden in safes, kings in peril, noble armour and life-saving trees: a name open to the world and brimming with stories.

Looking for an advertising partner
To support the launch of the Royal Oak, Audemars Piguet decided to create a dedicated campaign. Here again, the approach was unprecedented. Until then advertising campaigns had been brand-based and usually featured multiple products.

The decision was taken to work with the Hugo Buchser agency and this probably happened during a game of cards between friends. One could easily imagine that the participants included a certain Gilbert Maillard, an advertising executive running the Hugo Buchser agency that promoted the ski jumping championships in Le Brassus, of which Georges Golay was the president and one of the major promoters.

Hugo Buchser
At the time, the family company founded in 1927 and known today as Europa Star HBM S.A., still bore the name of its ebullient founder Hugo Buchser (1896–1961). This extraordinary entrepreneur, founder of the Transmarine watch brand, publisher, merchant and tireless traveller notably launched numerous watch magazines in South America, Asia, Africa, Spain, Switzerland, as well as Middle-East and Portugal. After his death in 1961, the company was managed by his son-in-law Gilbert Maillard who, in addition to being a friend of Georges Golay, was a former schoolmate of Gérald Genta.

Preparation of the Royal Oak campaign
A concept as strong as the Royal Oak is a rare treat for an advertising agency. Until April 1972, fine-tuning continued on the texts, photographs, leaflets and advertisements, emphasising the qualities of the ultra-thin movement, the octagonal shape, the hexagonal screws, etc. Yet the two elements dominating the messages of the advertising campaign were, on the one hand, the “tribute to steel” and, on the other hand, the capacity of the watch to unite the worlds of design, sport, know-how, innovation... This represented a metaphor for the modern world and the personality of the customers for whom the watch was intended. It is worth recalling that the Range Rover had just made a similar mark on the automotive world of the time.

Final touches before the baptism of fire
The development of the Royal Oak continued well beyond its launch, but the last few months before Basel 1972 were memorable. The tension was palpable, as was a certain feverishness, even to the point of bad temper.

Watchmaker Fredy Capt, who took part in this adventure, says he assembled the first steel prototypes “without any real plan, guided by instinct.” He recalls that the first hexagonal screws were made of stainless steel, “not so stainless after all given that they often rusted”, making it impossible to dismantle the case. As for the angles, they were so clean-cut that they became downright sharp: “the watchmakers had to soften the angles by hand, with a burnisher.” It was not uncommon for him and his colleagues to take a few more parts and components home in the evenings to be “tweaked”...

Fredy Capt’s workshop was next to the offices of Jacques-Louis Audemars and Georges Golay. He recalls that the latter, a keen cigar enthusiast, arrived one morning with a gloomy expression on his face: “I think we are crazy. We will never sell steel watches at this price!”, adding: “If we do not sell them, we will recover the movements and scrap the cases and bracelets.”

In a company employing a total of 84 people, the presence of a homologation laboratory was not on the agenda. To test the watch’s water resistance, Fredy Capt remembers that Jacques-Louis Audemars placed a jar on his windowsill with a label stating “salt water corresponding to the saltiest seas in the world”, and that a Royal Oak watch hung inside.

The costliest stainless steel watch in the world
Before moving on to the launch of the watch, let’s take a moment to focus on its price positioning. This is the aspect that most shocked the watch industry, perhaps because the price of the Royal Oak was sometimes published in the advertisements of the era. In 1972, the Royal Oak sold for CHF 3,300.

If we compare these amounts to the price of contemporary steel watches, the contrast is striking. In the absence of primary sources, we will resort to testimony from those involved at the time and collectors. In his Royal Oak guide published in July 2016, Marco Stranghellini wrote: “In Italy, the Rolex Submariner was less than a third of this price, and the IWC Ingenieur less than a quarter.” In an interview with Constantin Stikas in 2009, Gérald Genta said: “The most expensive steel watch at the time cost CHF 850.”

In actual fact, despite its steel case, the Royal Oak was as expensive as some gold watches. Or even more. In the Audemars Piguet 1972 catalogue, for example, the yellow gold Model 5043 equipped with ultra-thin Calibre 2003 was listed at CHF 2,990.

Rather than ignore it, the Hugo Buchser agency decided to use the Royal Oak’s very high price as a hook for a strong message. Some of the ads challenged readers: “What makes steel more valuable than gold?”; “Would you buy a Rembrandt for its canvas?”; “Steel at the price of gold”; “The costliest steel watch in the world.” The copy went on to explain that the price of the Royal Oak stemmed from the extreme complexity involved in producing its case and its ultra-thin selfwinding Calibre 2121, a masterpiece of miniaturisation.

Official launch and first reactions
In 1972, the Basel Watch Fair inaugurated its fifth hall and now covered 20,000 m2. Located in Hall 1, Audemars Piguet’s booth No. 545 spanned barely 60 m2, like that of Rolex. It was located opposite the Longines booth, which was twice as large, and the SSIH stand, which was four times bigger. Alongside Vacheron Constantin and Jaeger-LeCoultre, the watchmaker from Le Brassus was in good company.

The Audemars Piguet archives do not contain any reports on the exhibition, nor any orders or direct testimony relating to the Royal Oak, nor even a photograph of the booth or the display cases. Nonetheless, several witnesses from the time recall that the watch caused a sensation. In 2006, Jacqueline Dimier, who created most of the AP models between 1975 and 1999, remembers: “That spring, many of us from all walks of life crowded into the Audemars Piguet showcases at the Basel Fair. Surprised and stunned, we realised without any clear explanation that a step was being taken that was at last connecting traditional watchmaking to an industrial aesthetic of the future.”

First deliveries
The first few months were somewhat chaotic. Large-scale production was a major challenge, a real baptism of fire. Not only were component deliveries running late, but each assembly required endless rework. Little by little, the craftspeople overcame the difficulties, so much so that by the end of 1972, the workshops had produced an impressive total of 565 Royal Oak watches. Sales fluctuated before really picking up with the arrival of the gold versions. These figures may seem modest 50 years later, but in their time they were remarkable.

Since its inception, the Royal Oak has never stopped evolving. Only the essential aesthetic codes of the collection, such as the tonneau shape of the case, the octagonal bezel and the eight visible hexagonal screws have remained unchanged. Fifty years after its creation, more than 500 variations have come to reinterpret the iconoclast that has become an icon.