
It’s Cool To Be Square
October 25, 2024 – The watch world experienced a seismic event last week that has had a polarizing effect on its community. Arguably the most iconic member of horology’s ‘Holy Trinity’, Patek Philippe dropped their first new collection for over 24 years.
The new collection, named ‘Cubitus’ endured a real baptism of fire in its first 24hrs of social media introduction. Patek kept the physical journalist presence of the launch to an absolute minimum, so it was to just a handful of privileged, combined with Patek’s own PR machine that fed the story to the masses.
It was no surprise then that some of the bigger and weightier internet journalists/Influencers reports were definitely flavoured with a little bitterness that their overblown sense of importance had not been felt so keenly by Patek who had apparently decided they weren’t needed to help launch the new timepieces with their attendance.
As we all know, the internet has given a voice to critical opinion like no other medium and the Patek launch has been no exception. Queue much laughter and derision, some exclaiming that it must be a joke, whilst others drew less than favourable comparisons with much cheaper watches and child-like drawings, unable to believe that Patek would launch such an ‘ugly’ collection of timepieces. The response from Patek Philippe President Thierry Stern in an interview with watch media TimeTidewatches was very clear, “The haters are mostly people who have never had a Patek and never will. So that doesn’t bother me.” He’s got a point, 99.9% of the armchair haters with the loudest opinions are indeed people that will probably never make it on a waiting list to buy one form retail, let alone pay the astronomical price tag to pick one up on the grey market.
Whilst we’re still a little on the fence here at The Premium Time Company on how we feel about the watches, we’re intrigues, but unfortunately definitely fall into the above group that are unlikely to ever get a call from Patek to tell us that our new watch is in and ready for collection! With that out of the way we can relax, and we can’t help feeling the watch media could do with lightening up a little and not getting their knickers in a twist so much about this. Design needs evolution, change is good and we’re pretty sure it won’t take long before we’ve all warmed up to the Cubitus and added it to our Lottery win check list.
What is very likely going to be the most popular model of the new collection, and probably our favourite, is the stainless-steel green dial ref. 5821/1A, priced at $41k retail. Where it all gets a bit silly for us is this, one of the motivations for this watch is that it is aimed at younger clientele and entered at a lower price point. Only serious VIP Patek clients have been able to buy one so far, and the watch has arrived on the grey market with prices starting form around $200,000k.
There will always be a market for these watches, and frankly we quite like Thierry Stern’s ‘fuck you’ quote. His brand is unashamedly expensive and reserved for a wealthy class who won’t care if this week’s popular Youtube/ Instagram influencer doesn’t like the watch. The watch will be here long after their fame has waned.