This year, Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak Offshore was launched in ceramic. And when I say ceramic, I mean everything is ceramic. The bezel is ceramic. The case is ceramic. Every single link of the bracelet is ceramic. And damn is it good.
Every once in a while, a brand gets it so right that the watch it’s created surpasses even your wildest, most libidinous fantasies. That is precisely the case with Audemars Piguet’s all-new black ceramic Royal Oak Offshore Selfwinding Chronograph, reference 26238CE. That’s because the geniuses at Le Brassus have applied their game-changing capacity to execute ceramic at a level of finish that is totally unrivaled by any other brand in watchmaking to this now-30-year-old icon. The end result is a timepiece that is so ravishing, that so completely shatters your impulse control and so instantly causes your bloodstream to flood with pleasure-inducing dopamine that you will never be able to stop obsessing over it, until the day you strap one permanently to your wrist.
Yes, that’s how damnably good it is. It’s true that our collective taste for watches has gone through something of a roller-coaster ride, with the pendulum in the mid-2000s swinging wildly into the oversized realm before returning to a global reset to classic proportions. But to me, even as one of the primary champions of the return to rational sizing, the Royal Oak Offshore at 42mm in diameter and 15.4mm in thickness is absolutely perfect. So much so that, I would say, no individual without a Royal Oak Offshore in their safe deposit box can truly call themselves a true blue, die-hard watch collector, so significant is its contribution to the story of modern watchmaking. The fact that after three decades of using this timepiece as its test bed for material innovation — ranging from early attempts at PVD, the world’s first forged carbon case and now sublimely finished ceramic, to different complications, to an ISO-certified dive watch, to a grande complication, to a stunning automatic chronograph tourbillon — AP has returned to the undeniable allure of the watch in its very original incarnation. But this time with one very major difference.
CERAMIC AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE
The history of ceramic in watches goes back to 1962 with the Rado Diastar, which featured both a case and bracelet made of ceramic, or more specifically tungsten carbide. Later, in 1982, Omega introduced a Seamaster Cermet made of a ceramic and metal composite and in 2000, Chanel introduced the J12. But it was only when Audemars Piguet entered the world of this essentially scratchproof material that we witnessed ceramic finished to true perfection. Indeed, this transubstantiative act has a precedent when in 1972 Audemars Piguet created the Royal Oak. Much has been made of the timepiece’s status as the first integrated bracelet sports watch. But part of the reason for the watch’s (at the time) staggering price of CHF 3,300 (the same as a Jaguar) was the spectacular level of finish exhibited by the case and bracelet. No one had ever seen steel finished in a way that surpassed the finishing on the vast majority of gold and platinum watches of the time. Remember, in the context of the era, watches were largely round and polished with perhaps a few small sections of brushing for contrast. Audemars Piguet transformed vertical brushing into a signature decorative motif that was so perfect that it seemed applied by the hand of the Almighty rather than that of a human being. Think of it as the Chiaroscuro of watch decoration.
Then Audemars Piguet used the contrast between its mastery of brushing to contrast sharply with the use of mirror polished angles. Says Audemars Piguet’s CEO François-Henry Bennahmias, “The work of finishing a steel Royal Oak case was so significant that the cost of this vastly surpassed the material cost of the underlying steel case and bracelet, which was the rationale behind its pricing. This was considered completely new and crazy at the time. Sure, there were plenty of steel watches, but these were almost all tool watches and finished in an industrial way. We decided to apply the same level of finish on steel as we did so far only on precious metal.”
It was February 2, 2023, 3 p.m. Le Brassus time. I’ll never forget the moment I set eyes on Audemars Piguet’s black ceramic Royal Oak Offshore. I had to stop, grab a loupe and look at the entire watch and bracelet under magnification. Because I had never before witnessed
