In 1949, an avuncular professor with a penchant for batik shirts at Sarah Lawrence College published one of the most seminal and influential books of all time, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it, Joseph Campbell explained the existence of a single heroic archetype, a monomyth that stretched across all cultures and transcended the boundaries of time. His book demonstrated that every single hero in human history, literature, mythology and religion all followed the same heroic arc. They are plucked from obscurity, initially resist their calling, are compelled into their journey by a twist of fate, find mentors, struggle, persevere, suffer before ultimately achieving their heroic status and returning reborn to the world to contribute to its benefit. Campbell showed that every one of these heroes from Odysseus to the Buddha to Joan of Arc to Mohandas K. Gandhi to even Jesus of Nazareth followed this same journey. This exact same journey could be used to describe the lives of real living heroes that existed many years after the book’s release, including individuals like Muhammad Ali.
Let’s take a quick look at Ali’s life. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to a sign painter and a domestic helper. At the age of 12, he has his bicycle stolen and fortuitously takes up boxing. He wins an Olympic Gold medal but throws it in the river because of being denied service at a “white only” restaurant. In 1964, against all odds, he wins the heavyweight championship, despite his opponent Sonny Liston trying to blind him with ointment applied to his gloves. He finds a mentor in American religious leader Elijah Muhammad and converts to Islam. Then three years later, at the peak of his career and at the height of his ability, he is banned from boxing for being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. The three and a half years he is not allowed to fight represent the period of his greatest fitness — time he will never get back. In 1971, the ban is overturned. But his return to the ring is marred by his first professional defeat and the belief is that his career is over. He is at a low point in his life. But in 1974, at the age of 32 and considered largely washed up by many, he defeats the most feared and dominating fighter of the era, George Foreman, to once again become champion. The way his story perfectly fits Campbell’s monomyth is astounding. Ultimately, the takeaway is that every hero in human history is essentially the same archetypal entity recast in many guises over and over again. Their different appearances are simply the product of the historical and cultural contexts of their time to make them relatable to us.
Over the 50 years of its history, Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak has similarly been recast in many iterations, each time to fit the zeitgeist of that decade, or to unveil a new unrealized dimension of the watch’s character. To paraphrase the poet Walt Whitman, the Royal Oak is large, and it contains multitudes. It has been a mid-sized formed art piece that has been the canvas of wildly libidinous chromatic expressionism. It has been the vessel for extraordinary complications, like the world’s loudest and sonically pure minute repeater and an ultra-thin automatic flying tourbillon. It has worn many guises, clad itself in steel first, then gold, platinum, tantalum, titanium and black then white ceramic. But each time it has been reborn, each new version has only served to strengthen the heroic archetype and monomyth of the legendary Royal Oak — never a simple extrapolation but a model with a sense of purpose, singularity and necessity.
EVERLASTING ELEGANCE
The story of the Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin Reference 15202 is, to me, inextricably linked with the story of Audemars Piguet’s CEO François-Henry Bennahmias. If not for Bennahmias’ decision to rebuild the Royal Oak collection and reinforce the position of the Jumbo within the collection in 2012, we would not be seeing the current insane success of the luxury watch market. Why? Because of all categories — excluding Rolex sports models, which comprise a different world unto themselves — it is the integrated bracelet sports chic watch that is the hottest genre of high-end timepieces around. This was a category created in 1972 by Audemars Piguet and the Royal Oak, and made once again the focus of the brand 40 years later in 2012.
A full decade on, so successful has the Royal Oak been that every single reference of it made in its myriad iterations has also become a wait-list-only success story. But more than that, so huge is the demand for anything Royal Oak that it has actually allowed other brands to succeed where they were previously floundering.
Audemars Piguet collector and 2021 Geneva Grand Prix d’Horlogerie (GPHG) jury member Ahmed “Shary” Rahman declares, “If you were going to give a prize to the greatest CEO of the modern watch era, I would say many people
