THE GREAT INNOVATOR — THE INCREDIBLE SIX-YEAR HISTORY OF BVLGARI’S ICONIC OCTO FINISSIMO
Sometimes, it takes the world a moment to fully understand genius. This was clearly the case during the first Impressionist exhibition when, upon viewing Monet’s now iconic Impression, Sunrise, the humorist, critic and clearly something of a moron, Louis Leroy, scathingly and derisively wrote, “Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” History, of course, being the greatest judge, holds Monet in awed reverence while Leroy’s name has faded into an anonymity that is most analogous to the “unfinished wallpaper” he once so unwittingly compared Monet’s painting to.
While the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo was instantly recognized by those of us who understood its deliciously brazen departure from the banal, formulaic repetition of yearly watch novelties whose mantra was “new dial/strap/hands but no change”, it took the rest of the world a few years to fully comprehend that this was more than a daring design, but a statement of in-house competences — in dial making, case making, movement making and bracelet making — so brilliantly and synergistically linked that to me, it is the single greatest watchmaking achievement in the last decade of modern horology. Further, the Octo Finissimo’s story not only in terms of record-setting technical achievement, but also its rise as a contemporary icon to truly rival the entrenched integrated bracelet, sports chic watches — Patek Philippe’s Nautilus and Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak — is a statement of the inspired leadership of the true innovator that is Bvlgari’s CEO Jean-Christophe Babin. Babin, over his tenure as the CEO of the famed Roman jeweler, has innovated not just at the product level, not just at the brand level, not just at the communication level, but also at the exhibition level by staging, along with his sister brands Hublot and Zenith, the first-ever LVMH Group watch fair held in Dubai this January.
ORIGINS OF A HOROLOGICAL ICON
But before we go into the history and milestones of the Octo Finissimo, let’s pause to examine the genesis of the integrated sports watch and the way in which Bvlgari is both spiritually aligned and yet a radical departure from its rivals. So, time was, if you were a Riviera Rake with the last name Agnelli or Rubirosa in that halcyon era between the ’50s and the ’70s, before the Côte d’Azur was overrun by oligarchs and priapically winged orange Lamborghinis that look like mobile fertility symbols, before the era of champagne bottle wars and when culture, taste and money still aligned, you had to dress in a certain way. And that was with a certain educated but nonchalant élan, a Cifonelli or Caraceni
