Nowadays, watches like the Royal Oak perpetual calendar skeleton (a standard in AP’s collection and among the best perpetuals on the market, in my opinion), the Royal Oak Equation of Time, the revolutionary Chron-AP, and also this Millenary Minute Repeater demonstrate that AP is certainly a top-tier manufacture. AP’s in-house self-winding caliber 3120, found inside the basic Royal Oak 15400, can also be one of the finest base movements in the world. All these are the things which keep AP relevant to “real” watch lovers that occasionally get lost in the buzz around the other types of AP buyers.And then there is your typical well-to-do watch purchaser. For me, the best analogy for this other type of AP buyer is advised using a singular scene in 1 episode of a single television series that has been popular for a time period some years back. I’m speaking about Entourage, and I wager the vast majority of you know exactly to which scene I’m referring.Ari Gold receives a solid gold Royal Oak chronograph (not unlike the opinion I’ll review down below) by his own then-soon-to-be boss, that describes it as “One of the best watches in the world.” The camera then pans to the solid gold watch from its box, and Ari is in disbelief about the present — and consequently, AP is introduced into a whole group of potential new clients, the men who see Entourage. From this time, you see several of the personalities on the show wearing APs. Many at the time believed Audemars Piguet Watches On Ebay Replica had compensated for the positioning, but in discussions with AP through the years, it had been disclosed to me not just one dollar was exchanged. Instead, a particular producer on the series proved to be a massive AP client, and insisted it be a Royal Oak presented to Ari. Entourage did a great deal for AP, but it was not this 1 positioning that defines the “other” type of AP client. It does give you a good notion of where AP is a favorite, and that is in Hollywood, music, and sports, with all the young and moneyed.
Two year ago Audemars Piguet announced plans for a new museum, shaped like a glass spiral rising out of the pastoral fields of Le Brassus and designed by the same Danish architect responsible for Google’s new headquarters. The watchmaker broke ground on the the new building at the start of October 2016, capping two years of planning and design.
Designed by Danish architects BIG, short for Bjarke Ingels Group, the museum will be some 2800 square meters, or well over 30,000 square feet. Named Maison des Fondateurs, or “Home of the Founders”, the museum will have panoramic walls of curved glass along its entire length, topped by a roof garden.
The Audemars Piguet museum is just one of the high profile projects BIG is working on. Others include Two World Trade Center in New York City, Google’s sci-fi campus in Mountain View, and Lego House in Denmark.
But the museum will not be the only addition to the Audemars Piguet compound. Closed since early 2016, the quaint Hotel des Horlogers will be razed and replaced with a similarly stylish glass building designed by BIG with sloping buildings and long glass facades.
Owned by Audemars Piguet and separated from its factory by a carpark, the four star Hotel des Horlogers – or “watchmaker’s hotel” – will grow from 27 rooms to 65 and become a luxury hotel worthy of the visitors who make the pilgrimage to see expensive watches being produced.
Both the museum and hotel are slated to open in 2019.