This year, Piaget has focused on the two strengths that most clearly define the Maison: on one hand, ultra-thin men’s watches (taken to their most technically demanding extreme) and on the other, boldly designed and extravagantly gem-set women’s watches. Altiplano Ultimate Concept Nobody could reasonably dispute that this insanely thin new watch is quite mind-blowing. But to properly understand it, a bit of context is needed. Its genesis dates back to 2014, when Piaget introduced the Altiplano 900P. At an unfeasibly skinny 3.65mm, it was the thinnest hand-wound watch ever made and it redefined our assumptions about the limits of ultra-thin watchmaking. The stroke of genius had been to reject the traditional binary notion of case plus movement, and instead to use the caseback as the baseplate. However, Piaget was already a serial record-breaker in ultra-thin watchmaking. In 1960, three years after launching the hand-wound Calibre 9P (at 2mm, it was one of the world’s slimmest movements), the 2.3mm thick Calibre 12P set a new record as the thinnest self-winding movement. Since the millennium, other records have followed: thinnest tourbillon, thinnest minute repeater, thinnest skeletonised movements – and more. Then, at SIHH 2018, Piaget introduced us to the Altiplano Ultimate…
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