Ten years in the making, the Cubitus collection makes its debut—and it’s better in person.
Patek Philippe‘s Cubitus line of watches—its first new collection in 25 years—landed with a splash, but not the kind the brand was expecting. Leaked a few days ahead of this week’s launch due to an ad that debuted ahead of the embargo in Fortune magazine (much to Patek’s dismay), the reveal had watch enthusiasts so shocked, there are entire YouTube videos dedicated to whether it’s fake or not. In fact, even serious longtime collectors we spoke with ahead of the reveal said they also thought it was fake. Some even thought the company had leaked the release itself on purpose. “We don’t do a lot of surprises in our strategy,” said a Patek Philippe executive at a dinner ahead of the release in Munich on Wednesday.
Thinking outside the box for a top-of-the-line luxury brand like Patek Philippe instead meant the drop of a new watch collection that looked awfully close to its longtime bestseller, the Nautilus. “You should not always reinvent everything from zero,” says Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern from the company’s German HQ in Munich. “Why? Take the best of what you know and improve it.”
The leaked model, the 45 by 9.6 mm platinum Ref. 5822P ($88,378), sports the same navy horizontal embossed pattern, hour and minute hands, dotted minutes track, and similar—if not more angled and pronounced—indices. Like all platinum Pateks it has a diamond on the edge of the case, but this time it’s baguette-cut to nod to the edgier elements of this timepiece. The most notable difference is a more square shape to the octagonal case, which differs from the more rounded Nautilus. The effect is a bit more brutalist in nature. Some have accurately described it as a mix between the Nautilus, a Gerard Charles, and a Cartier Santos Dumont case. The second striking difference is the big date at 12 o’clock.
The platinum model is the only reference to come on a strap—made of an ultra-resistant composite material embossed with a fabric motif. Stern says the original prototype was equipped with a platinum bracelet, but it was too heavy. (Indeed, even without the metal bracelet the platinum case adds significant heft.)
Beyond the case shape, the big news for the Ref. 5822P is its new movement, the Caliber 240 PS CI J LU, which is based on the 240PS IRM CLU. It combines a large date window, moon phase, and day of the week indications that all change simultaneously in 18 milliseconds. The caliber resulted in the filing of six patents for its tangential brake, dual-function spring mechanism, flexible corrector, dual-function spring, flexible plate, and positioning mechanism. Many of these serve to facilitate the perfect alignment of the date digits and the ability to correct all of the indications at any time of the day.
