World of Patek Philippe
The Nautilus was created to break with tradition – and went on to become the most talked-about and sought-after timepiece. A look back.
NICHOLAS FOULKES The British historian, book author and journalist is considered the most profound connoisseur of Patek Philippe. For beyond, he comments on specific epochs and phenomena.
The Nautilus is one of those rare cultural objects to which successive generations have ascribed varied meanings, and which everyone, from seasoned collector to nouveau-riche neophyte, feels obliged to have an opinion about.
This horological palimpsest began life in 1976 as a piece of contrarian steel in a world that still equated true luxury with precious metal. Born at the height of the quartz crisis, the Nautilus was Patek Philippe’s bold riposte to an industry in existential doubt. Gérald Genta’s design, with its porthole case, lateral ‘ears’ and gadrooned blue dial, distilled the then oxymoronic concept of the luxury steel sports watch into something instantly memorable, advertised with the defiantly impertinent line that one of the world’s costliest watches was made of steel. In a house such as Patek Philippe, famed for slim gold dress pieces and rarefied complications, this was an act of unparalleled audacity. Hardly surprising, then, that for years the Nautilus remained a connoisseur’s choice rather than a salon favourite.
By the turn of the millennium, the big-cased, design-forward watch was no longer an avant-garde curiosity, and popular taste was beginning to catch up. The Nautilus, once a symbol of 1970s daring, began its journey to canonical status.
Act of unprecedented audacity: original Nautilus
Ref. 3700/1A from 1976.
Ref. 3700/1A from 1976.
Patek Philippe’s decision to refresh the model for its 30th anniversary in 2006 proved decisive with a new generation, led by the reference 5711. This watch adopted a threepart case construction and softened the rectilinearity of the original by having the ‘ears’ follow the curvature of the bezel. Patek updated the famous bracelet by adding a butterfly clasp. The aggregate effect of these changes, though slight in themselves, made the Nautilus feel and wear like a 21st-century version of itself and less like a period piece. It regained its contemporaneity and became timeless sculpture in stainless steel.
Redesigned for its 30th anniversary: the legendary Ref. 5711.
World’s most desired watch: farewell series of the Ref. 5711 in olive green.
Ref. 5711 in Tiffany blue: an object of historic significance.
“ITS DEPARTURE TURNED ITS
STORY INTO LEGEND.”
PERPETUAL CALENDAR REIMAGINED
Around the same time, Patek Philippe cautiously ventured into the world of the complication with the Nautilus. The reference 3710, with its elegant asymmetry and celebrated ‘swoosh’ power reserve indicator, was followed by the reference 3712 – soon to be the reference 5712 – featuring a moon-phase and date clustered on the dial. The union of haute horlogerie and high design culminated in the perpetual calendar 5740, re-interpreting one of Patek Philippe’s most aristocratic complications in the language of the sports watch. The Nautilus had moved far beyond its origins as a rugged steel outlier.
If the 5711 quietly rewrote the Nautilus story, its departure turned its story into legend. News that the reference was to be phased out sent the market into hysteria. Such was the outcry that Patek offered the venerable 5711 a reprieve of a year, during which it was sold as a valedictory series with an olive green dial – and became the most widely sought watch in the world.
The green-dial variant sold for many multiples of its list price: it was evident that rationality had vacated the field. And that was before the detonation of the little ‘bomb’, as Thierry Stern described the final, final 5711 in Tiffany Blue. A total of 170 pieces of this model were produced to mark 170 years of partnership with the New York jeweller Tiffany, itself newly absorbed into the LVMH empire.
Ref. 5712 with moon-phase and date display.
Highlight with a perpetual calendar: Ref. 5740.
AN ASTRONOMICAL BID
The first one was sold by Phillips for charity, fetching the astronomic sum of $6.5 million, over a hundred times the retail price. The result was inevitable: the Tiffany-signed, Tiffany-hued 5711 became an instant epochal object.
Today the reference 5811 assumes the role once played by the 5711. Interestingly, it has returned to the two-piece case construction of the original. A little larger than its predecessors, it is engineered with the serene confidence of a watch that has no need to shout. It stands at the threshold of the Nautilus’s second half-century, proof that the line can be gently evolved without losing the essential tension between sporting nonchalance and urbane refinement.
As for the next fifty years, I have the uncomfortable sense that I shall not be here to see them all, whereas the Nautilus – that idiosyncratic child of the 1970s – almost certainly will. It will sit on new wrists, including the wrists of those who are as yet unborn. The world in which the Nautilus will celebrate its centenary may be radically different to ours. But I’m willing to bet that it will remain recognisably itself – the watch that began as a bold challenge to orthodoxy and went on to become the most talked-about and desired timepiece ever to grace the human wrist.
Exudes serene confidence: the new Ref. 5811.
The Nautilus is also popular in the ladies’version: Ref. 7010.
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