Patek Philippe's 2022 offerings have arrived ⌚️
Almost 50 years after its introduction, the Nautilus can be called the most prestigious sports watch in the world without fear of hyperbole. Alas, there was to be no update now, in another year that we’re creeping closer to its 50th anniversary.
The watch release Patek has talked most about to the throngs in Geneva today, though—and with which we begin our round-up below—deserves its place at the top of the billing.You’ve got two pretty big things going on here. One, the Annual Calendar complication, came into being in the late ’90s when Patek Philippe’s engineers devised a wheels-and-pinions mechanism that could distinguish between months with 30 and 31 days, meaning it only had to be adjusted once a year.
The other, the Travel Time complication, was conceived in mid-1950s, when Patek enlisted watchmaking legend Louis Cottier with the task of creating a piece that could jump time zones without the itinerant wearer taking the watch off the wrist. Now, the two have come together for the first time, in the form of a piece in white-gold that will adjust the date when the time zone is corrected.
The home of the new self-winding caliber movement, which packs eight patents in all, is a new Calatrava case with flanks that feature a hobnail pattern in guilloche, while the dial’s white-gold applied numerals and hour/minute hands with beige luminescent coating, set against the textured charcoal-gray backdrop of the dial, complete a vintage appearance.