AUDEMARS PIQUET History

AUDEMARS PIQUET, one of the most iconic Swiss watch companies founded in 1875 by two young and ambitious watchmakers Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet. This two young men created their workshop in the home town, Le Brauss deeply believing that they could be helped by the network that Vallée de Joux’s was providing to all watchmakers as it was considered as the hub of all watch companies.

This was the start of the creation of unique complicated mechanisms handcrafted in a period that was the start of industrialisation and everything seemed to go in that direction. Against all obstacles they managed to create a line that till know it is one of the most famous lines in the watch world, the famous ROYAL OAK.

AUDEMARS PIQUET Milestones

1868

Audemars Piguet’s first building , where Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet set their watch lab in Le Brassus.

1907

Set their second workshop next to the first one an important milestone as it gave them the ability to expand their buiness and extend their growth in a whole new level.

1970

The birth of the legendary Royal Oak with Reference Number 5402 only in steel but with its unique design and characteristics matched the price of gold watches.

GERALD GENTA AND Audemars Piquet Royal Oak

One of the most important partnerships that defined the future of Audemars Piquet was the collaboration with Maestro and the creation of one of the most iconic watches for the brand, Royal Oak. In 1970, they reached out in order to design a new watch . It was Inspired by a vintage diving helmet attached to the rest of the suit with screws, the model was sketched in just one night. The designer transferred the octagonal shape to the design of this piece, keeping the screws on the bezel. The Royal Oak was the first luxury sports watch that was ever made from steel and changed forever the perception of this metal and its position in luxury watches.

1976

The birth of the first ladies’ Royal Oak with Reference Number 8638, the beginning of an exclusive collection for women.

1977

In the collection the choice of gold was added as well as other sizes and movements.

1977-1981

This was one of the most creative and productive periods for the company as 27 new models were added in the original collection boosting the reputation and sales of the company and creating a fanatic audience forever in love with the excellence and the aesthetics of the company.

One of the most famous designers for Audemars Piguet was “THE INCREDIBLE GERALD GENTA”

Author

Julien Favre

Vallée de Joux, Switzerland — Contributing Editor, high complications & independent watchmaking
Julien Favre learned the difference between good silence and bad silence before he was ten. Good silence was his grandfather at the bench in Le Sentier, loupe screwed into one eye, breathing shallow over a disassembled minute repeater. Bad silence was the moment a hairspring pinged off the peg-wood and disappeared into the floorboards. The family atelier — three generations of movement servicing for the maisons that carpet the Vallée de Joux — was never framed as a legacy Julien was expected to join. It simply was the house, the way weather is the house in a mountain valley.
He resisted it, predictably. He studied economics in Lausanne and spent two years in Geneva watch retail, selling the objects rather than opening them. What pulled him back was not sentiment but frustration: he found he could describe why a movement was beautiful far better than anyone selling it could, because he had seen its underside. He started writing — first a blog dissecting finishing under macro photography, then commissioned work for the trade press, then features that treated escapements the way music critics treat a fugue.
Julien now covers high complications, restoration, and the fragile economics of independent watchmaking for European and English-language titles. His reporting is unusually technical without being cold; he is as interested in the person hunched over the bench as in the tolerances they hold. He is skeptical of hype, allergic to press-release adjectives, and reliably the first to notice when a "revolutionary" caliber is a reworked ébauche.
He still returns to the family workshop each winter to service a single pocket watch on his grandfather's bench — a discipline, he says, that keeps his writing honest. A critic who cannot do the thing risks worshipping it.
Byline version: Julien Favre is a contributing editor covering high complications and independent watchmaking. He grew up in a movement-servicing atelier in the Vallée de Joux and still works the family bench each winter

Author