Birth of an Icon

The process of artistic creation is an eminently personal phenomenon rarely documented in company archives, which mainly preserve orders, drawings, minutes of meetings and accounts, etc. For the Royal Oak, we are fortunate to have the designer’s original testimony. A few months before his death, at the age of 80, Gérald Genta (1931–2011) granted a long recorded interview to Audemars Piguet that provided the backbone for the beginning of the story we are exploring here. Admittedly, in 41 years, recollections can become somewhat hazy and certain dates or facts do not stand up to cross-referencing, while others are somewhat romanticised. Nevertheless, the heart of the story remains intact, because strong emotions make for engraved memories. In 1970, the designer already had a premonition of creating the masterpiece of his career.

At that time, Audemars Piguet had just experienced the strongest 20 years of growth in its almost century-long history as it benefitted from the post-war economic boom. In two decades, it had gone from 35 to 84 employees – of whom 67 were active at the workbench – and had increased its production tenfold to 5,500 watches per year. Its turnover had followed the same progression and was nearing 10 million Swiss francs. Audemars Piguet was by then in the hands of the founding families’ second and third generations, represented by Paul Edward Piguet (1890–1979) and Jacques-Louis Audemars (1910–2002), and had been run by Georges Golay (1921–1987) for the previous three years. The latter was a visionary entrepreneur, the son of a farmer and a native of the Vallée de Joux, who had participated in modernising the brand since his arrival in 1945.

After World War II, Audemars Piguet established a close working relationship with LeCoultre & Cie, which supplied the majority of its ébauches (unfinished movements), including Calibres 2120 and 2003, the world's thinnest in their categories. While complication watches remained an Audemars Piguet speciality, ultra-thin watches, often made with women in mind, accounted for over half of the production. Even though the notion of "watch models" was introduced in 1951, they were produced in very small series rarely exceeding 10 identical timepieces that were often one-of-a-kind.

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 April 11, 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.

On April 10, 1970, Georges Golay met his new SSIH agents Carlo de Marchi, Charles Bauty and Charles Dorot. 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.

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 Bulgari Bulgari (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). But before becoming more closely acquainted with Gérald Genta and his pioneering role, it is worth recalling the context in which the watch design profession arose.

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. In his 2011 interview, the designer said: “Everyone has their own taste, their own ‘vibrations’. Those I acquired at Audemars Piguet led me to develop a law of aesthetics and architecture corresponding to something intensely physical. The watch must adapt to the wrist and it has to fit smoothly under a shirt cuff.” He added, “We were like a tandem, Georges Golay and me. If he was in agreement about something and I wasn’t, we didn't make the model... We were in complete symbiosis.” So much so that the two men wore the same watch: Model 5233, featuring a design inspired by an almost completely dissolved bar of soap, the perfect aerodynamic shape.

It was between 1967 and 1971 that the relationship reached its highest level of intensity. In 1967, Genta was awarded an honourable mention at the “Prix de Genève” competition for an Audemars Piguet handbag watch. 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 April 10, 1970, they may well have been staying in nearby hotels.

Before retracing the stages in the Royal Oak’s creation, let’s take a look at its sources of inspiration and the myths and legends to which it has given rise. The Royal Oak’s aesthetics were nourished by numerous influences. It followed on naturally from the Audemars Piguet watches of the 1930s to 1960s with their extraordinary design and drew on the developments in contemporary architecture of the 1960s to 1970s. It was part of a cultural groundswell that was sweeping the world of contemporary art, architecture and music.

Many hypotheses have been put forward regarding the symbolic meaning of the Royal Oak, often based on parallels drawn with existing objects. One of the most popular is that the shape of the bezel and its eight screws reinterprets the gunports of some of the British fleet’s ‘Royal Oak’ warships. Nonetheless, the latter were in fact never octagonal or secured by eight screws. Not to mention the fact that the name Royal Oak was chosen more than a year and a half after the watch was first designed. More on this later.

We have just seen that Gérald Genta claimed to have been inspired by a diving helmet he saw during his childhood. While the link with water-resistance is undeniable, the octagonal shape definitely stems from another source (was there ever such a thing as an eight-bolt diving helmet?). In this respect, Martin K. Wehrli, former Director of the Audemars Piguet Museum, and other witnesses from the same period noted the existence of an innocuous object found in the small Audemars Piguet offices at No. 2 Rue Vallin in Geneva: a parcel-weighing machine with octagonal form. Should we view this as a potential indirect influence? Perhaps.

Olivier Audemars, Vice-Chairman of Audemars Piguet’s Board of Directors and representing the fourth generation of the founding families, explains that the visible screws are a powerful symbol. He recalls that displaying them was a disruptive act in 1972, a manifesto expressing mechanical resistance, technicality and solidity. Opening the case is indeed a mystery worthy of a safe, since it is impossible to turn an embedded hexagonal screw! The metaphor of the safe (in the land of banks) is all the more relevant in that the ultra-resistant steel case housed a partially gold movement. By protecting a mechanical and traditional treasure in an era when quartz technology was threatening the entire industry, the Royal Oak became a watchmaking hero.

A related interpretation is found in the theme of the ennoblement of steel. The finest artisans did indeed dignify the commonplace metal of a watch, raising it to a higher status. This act recalls another that took place 400 years earlier: Charles II of England ennobled the oak tree that saved his life in battle against Cromwell. The echo makes all the more sense in that the watch was named after the tree! In the same vein, some texts associate the steel of the watch with that of the English Royal Oak battleships...

On April 11, 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 and bought up by the Swatch Group in 1999 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. There were two remaining challenges: convincing the Favre-Perret craftspeople to move out of their comfort zone and work steel with the same meticulous care as gold; and developing an unprecedented water-resistant monocoque case architecture.

Gérald Genta was apparently told: “Sir, it won’t work.” Warming to the subject, the designer insisted: “It was a revolution! It was something incredible!” He went on to explain the design in more detail: “The rubber seal must obviously have a circular rim on top with two raised ramps… The bezel was quite wide, there had to be room for the screw heads and to ensure the body of the screw did not impinge on this water-resistance gasket.” The structure of the monocoque case was so innovative and special that the decision was quickly taken to make the prototypes in white gold.

On June 16, 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 (Genta explained that 1,000 units was a minimum to make a steel watch profitable), but also proof that gold was still an option.

In contrast to the guilloché pattern, the colour was already defined on Gérald Genta’s original design. Colouring a surface as complex as the Petite Tapisserie represented a major technical challenge, as the colour must neither detract from its innumerable tiny details, nor excessively dim the light effects. Painting would have blocked the tiny diamond-shaped holes. The natural choice was the electroplating technique that involved applying an extremely thin layer of colour to the dial. The artisans at Stern were nonetheless well aware that blue was the most difficult colour to obtain consistently using this process. Even if the duration of the baths is controlled to the nearest second, the mixtures to the nearest drop and the temperatures to the nearest degree, it is impossible to guarantee an identical colour for each dial series. The first Royal Oak dials were handcrafted and may vary slightly in colour, as may the guilloché work.

After galvanic treatment, each dial must be protected against oxidation by means of an almost transparent lacquer, often called zapon by craftspeople. In the Stern archives, the dial of Model 5402 (the first Royal Oak) is described as “Bleu Nuit 1 + N50”. The N50 indication meant Nuage 50 (cloud 50), the cloud being produced by the small amount of black colour poured into the liquid lacquer before it was applied to the blue dial.

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. Wilfred Berney recounts in a document written in 2020 that the watch was perceived then as “a monster... bearing no relation to what we did and knew how to do”, namely miniaturisation and openworking. The feeling was: “what does this big steel timepiece have to do with our collection? According to our executives, it is the Italian market that is asking for a different watch, sporty and in steel. If, on top of all the rest it’s the Italians calling the shots now... we are losing all control!”

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’re crazy. We will never sell steel watches at this price!”, adding: “If we don’t sell them, we’ll 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.

By April 12, 1972 in Le Brassus, the Basel Fair was due to open three days later. Paul Heizmann, head of the casing-up workshop, personally took charge of casing-up the first 20 Royal Oak watches, nos. 67001 to 67020. The even numbers were destined for Italomega, the odd numbers for Gameo. Four of them travelled to Basel.

In an unpublished memoir written by Martin K. Wehrli in 2017, who in 1972 was responsible for sales, recounts that the first buyer of the watch was “Ron Smith, acting on behalf of Garrard in London.” This supplier by appointment to Her Majesty is said to have confined himself to this laconic comment: "”Royal Oak is a pub name here.” The same document states that “Number one was not delivered until July 8, 1974 to a director of Harry Winston; the watch bore the case number 67001 and the movement number 127006.”

The first few months were rather chaotic. Large production was a major challenge, a real baptism of fire. Not only were component deliveries running late, but each assembly required endless rework. Of the 20 timepieces completed in April, the first five were delivered to the Italian market on May 2, but only 10 watches were cased-up throughout the entire month. June proved more productive, with 95 units, but this figure fell to eight watches in July.

Little by little, the craftspeople overcame the difficulties and from August onwards, the rate of delivery increased significantly. So much so that by the end of 1972, the workshops had produced an impressive total of 565 Royal Oak watches, 490 of which had been delivered! Thus, in barely eight months after its launch, Model 5402 had already broken the record for the number of identical units of a model sold in one year. Had the gamble paid off? All that remained was for retailers to sell the watches to end customers... before ordering new ones from Le Brassus.

From the launch of the watch in 1972 and during the first years of its commercialisation, the Swiss market absorbed between 150 and 200 watches per year, as did Asia. The Royal Oak found an audience in Germany. While it enjoyed modest yet growing success in France, the surprise came from Italy. Carlo de Marchi, one of the key minds behind the Royal Oak, struggled to distribute it, confirming Genta’s testimony. In 1972, 89 watches were delivered to Italomega. This figure dropped to 35 in 1973, then barely 31 the following year, painfully rising to 36 and 44 watches in 1975 and 1976. According to the Audemars Piguet commercial archives, the Italian market only sold just over half of the 400 timepieces ordered in 1971. Was there a “Gianni Agnelli effect”? While it definitely made its mark on people’s memories, the commercial impact is less likely. There is however still one unknown factor, since it is not impossible that certain Italian retailers came to buy watches directly in Switzerland... Whatever the case, the Royal Oak conquered the Italian market from 1976 to 1977 in its gold or two-tone smaller 29 and 35 mm versions (Models 8638, 4100 and variations).

Thus, despite the criticism, but also thanks to the debates it sparked, the Royal Oak was an undeniable commercial success from the outset. So much so that the A series, which was to be limited to 1,000 units, was eventually extended to 2,000. In 1975, Audemars Piguet launched the B series, followed the next year by the C series and finally the D series in December 1978. A total of 6,050 Model 5402 watches were sold, including 4,288 in steel, 876 in two-tone gold and steel, 736 in yellow gold, and 150 in white gold. More importantly, the Royal Oak was enriched in 1976 with a version for women, Model 8638 designed by Jacqueline Dimier, followed by Model 4100 endowed with a smaller diameter and a central seconds hand. Dozens of variations in materials, dimensions and levels of complications followed as the Royal Oak collection took shape.

In the wake of the new icon, numerous models inspired by the Royal Oak spirit were created throughout the Swiss watch industry. Genta recounted that a few years later, he was commissioned by Patek Philippe to design another steel watch, the Nautilus. In the same spirit, the Genevan designer revisited the IWC Ingenieur in 1976 and other designers were inspired by the Royal Oak to evolve watchmaking. One example is the Overseas 222 model designed by Jörg Hysek, launched by Vacheron Constantin in 1977.