Audemars Piguet

Mr. Bennahmias’ Frosted Gold Royal Oak

by Sumit Nag . Jan 17, 2017

While the rest of the crowd at SIHH 2017 is presently going gaga over Audemar Piguet’s newly announced hand-finished black ceramic Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar, this morning when we met with the brand’s incredible CEO, Mr. François-Henry Bennahmias, it was, however, not the watch that he had on his wrist.

Mr. Bennahmias was, in fact, wearing a frosted gold Royal Oak. A watch, which unless I’ve been reading the press material completely wrong, is slated for AP’s female clientele.

So, we asked and Mr. Bennahmias was very kind to explain. The following is a transcript of the man himself, explaining to us why he was wearing a frosted gold Royal Oak.

We showed the frosted Royal Oak to a very small group of people at SIHH in 2016. And a gentleman there told me that he wanted one for himself. Even though we had told him that we were aiming the watch for our female clients.

I wasn’t too sure if he was being serious. But he was dead serious. In fact, when we launched the watch in earlier in Florence, a lot of guys there, too, said that they’d want a frosted Royal Oak for themselves.

This got me thinking. So, I asked my team to make me a 15400 in frosted white and rose gold. I wanted to wear it for myself and see if I would end up wanting to wear one.

Well, I’m wearing one and showing it you. So, these guys weren’t kidding when they said they wanted one for themselves. I can now understand what they had already seen in the frosted Royal Oak when we launched it as part of our pre-SIHH announcements.

Here’s why I think it’s so cool: in dull light the watch is going to look like most other Royal Oaks. But throw some light into the situation, watch it reflect off the frosted case and bracelet surface and you just watch the party begin.

Editor’s note: As a bonus, also watch the little clip that went up on our Instagram this morning, of Mr. Bennahmias explaining how the watch industry has increased prices too much when compared with the high end car industry.

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