The Luxury Watch Blog

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The great debate, which, under pressure from the barons of timekeeping, has just begun regarding a reformed definition of ‘Swiss Made’ leading to stricter requirements, is going to weigh heavily on the industry’s suppliers.

Called, up to now, watchmaking’s ‘annex branches’, similar to the secondary branches of a tree, the sup-pliers currently run the risk of finding themselves as the main trunk of the watch tree. We know that they are being smothered with orders and that they are trying hard to satisfy them all. In addition, they are also the coveted prey in a frantic race towards industrial verticalization by many brands seeking to establish their independence. All of a sudden, the number of ‘bottlenecks’ in the supply chain has grown considerably in an increasingly nervous environment.

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 Some famous singers mention Audemars Piguet watches in there songs here some that i found.

1.) Rapper Jay-Z has referenced Audemars Piguet in several songs, including “Show You How” (”Damn you fadin’ hov, how you gave ‘em that? The Audemars Piguet, with the alligator strap”), Upgrade U by Beyonce (”Partner let me upgrade you, Audemars Piguet you”), and “Big Spender” by Freeway(”{Hey!} Rose gold, Royal Oak”).

   2.) Audemars Piguet is referenced in the song titled, “We Fly High” by Jim Jones (”100Gs worth of ice on da Audemars”).

   3.)  Audemars Piguet is referenced in the song titled, “Diamonds” by Fabolous featuring Young Jeezy (”I don’t do Breitlings, I do APs”).

Actively involved in golf since 1988 alongside Nick Faldo, the Manufacture Audemars Piguet is proud to have Cristie Kerr as one its ambassadors. The talented young golfer has just added a new victory to her impressive tally by winning the Ladies’ US Open 2007, on July 1st.

To celebrate this magnificent victory, Cristie Kerr paid a visit to Audemars Piguet’s New York City flagship boutique on Thursday July 5th, with trophy in hand.

Audemars Piguet is a long-time supporter of Cristie’s and was proud to welcome her back to New York City after her big weekend at Pine Needles. The brand shares essential values with the young champion, including a constant quest for perfection, concern for details, and patience dedicated to the cause of excellence.

AP Watches

There’s great interest in complications now among women and a growing women-watch-connoisseurs market,” notes Sue Rechner, former president of and now consultant to midprice Victorinox Swiss Army watches. “More and more women are interested in technical properties of watches, in complications and proprietary movements,” agrees Jenny Piaget, spokeswoman for high-end JeanRichard.

More of these are designed specifically for women, such as Milus’s Merea TriRetrograde Seconds, rather than being downsized men’s models. Franck Muller Geneve, for example, created the world’s smallest tourbillon—specifically for women watch connoisseurs. Audemars Piguet’s women’s automatic Millenary Starlit Sky uses its first complications movement created for a woman’s watch (and platform for future women’s watches), “because many women appreciate the subtleties of mechanical watchmaking,” says a company statement.

Other examples include Harry Winston’s platinum Ocean (seconds and days retrogrades); Pierre Kunz’s Tahiti Moon retrograde (minutes, hours), with Tahitian mother-of-pearl dial; and Rado’s Original automatic.

Citizen’s newest light-powered Eco-Drive calibre is for its women’s Riva chronograph. “More women want complications, and these [with full diamonds and mother-of-pearl inlays] are also feminine, making them more appealing to women,” says Stuart Zuckerman, senior vice president of Citizen Watch of America.

Watch movements

A movement in watchmaking is the mechanism that measures the passage of time and displays the current time (and possibly other information including date, month and day). Movements may be entirely mechanical, entirely electronic (potentially with no moving parts), or a blend of the two. Most watches intended mainly for timekeeping today have electronic movements, with mechanical hands on the face of the watch indicating the time.

Purely mechanical watches are still popular, although they are most commonly seen among expensive, collectible watches such as Fortis, Omega, Rolex and TAG Heuer. Their superb craftsmanship accounts for much of the attraction of purely mechanical watches. Compared to electronic movements, mechanical watches keep very poor time, often with errors of seconds per day. They are frequently sensitive to position and temperature, they are costly to produce, they require regular maintenance and adjustment, and they are more prone to failure.

Generally speaking, inexpensive and moderately priced timepieces with electronic movements now provide most users with timekeeping more accurate than the most expensive Rolex. However, in recent times there has been less emphasis on time precision as many people now carry multiple devices that will tell them the time such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops, so finely crafted mechanical watches have remained popular less as time pieces and more because of their aesthetic value as jewelry.

Tuning fork watches (introduced by Bulova in 1960) use a 360 hertz tuning fork to drive a mechanical watch. Since the fork is used in place of a typical balance wheel, these watches naturally hum instead of tick.

The inventor, Max Hetzel, was born in Basel, Switzerland, and joined the Bulova Watch Company of Bienne, Switzerland, in 1948. Hetzel was the first to use an electronic device, a transistor, in a wristwatch. Thus, he developed the first watch that could be qualified as electronic. However, fork movements are actually more “electrical”, like an old electrical wall clock, than electronic. The sweep second hand moves fluidly like that of an old electrical wall clock.

Such watches were also sold by Swiss watch companies under license of Bulova. In 1974, after leaving Bulova, Hetzel developed a different tuning fork drive for Omega Watches. The watch featured a cal. 1220 micromotor, and a tuning fork frequency of 720 hertz.[3] This development was obsolete compared to the newer electronic quartz watch which had become cheaper to produce and even more accurate.

Tuning fork movements are electromechanical. The task of converting electronically pulsed fork vibration into rotary movement is done via two tiny jeweled fingers, called pawls, one of which is connected to one of the tuning fork’s tines. As the fork vibrates, the pawls precisely ratchet a tiny index wheel. This index wheel has over 300 barely visible teeth and spins more than 38 million times per year. The tiny electric coils that drive the tuning fork have 8000 turns of insulated copper wire with a diameter of 0.015 mm and a length of 90 meters. This amazing feat of engineering was prototyped in the 1950s.

Electronic movements have few or no moving parts. Essentially, all modern electronic movements use the piezoelectric effect in a tiny quartz crystal to provide a stable time base for a mostly electronic movement: the crystal forms a quartz oscillator which resonates at a specific and highly stable frequency, and which can be used to accurately pace a timekeeping mechanism. For this reason, electronic watches are often called quartz watches. Most quartz movements are primarily electronic but are geared to drive mechanical hands on the face of the watch in order to provide a traditional analog display of the time, which is still preferred by most consumers.

The first prototypes of electronic quartz watches were made by the CEH research laboratory in Switzerland in 1962. The first quartz watch to enter production was the Seiko 35 SQ Astron, which appeared in 1969. Modern quartz movements are produced in very large quantities, and even the cheapest wristwatches typically have quartz movements.

The best quartz movements are significantly more accurate than the worst, but the difference is much smaller than that found between mechanical movements and quartz movements. Quartz movements, even in their most inexpensive forms, are an order of magnitude more accurate than purely mechanical movements. Whereas mechanical movements can typically be off by several seconds a day, an inexpensive quartz movement in a child’s wristwatch may still be accurate to within 500 milliseconds per day—ten times better than a mechanical movement.

Quartz mechanisms usually have a resonant frequency of 32768 Hz, chosen for ease of use (being 215). Using a simple 15 stage divide-by-two circuit, this is turned into a 1 pulse per second signal responsible for the watch’s keeping of time.

Some electronic quartz watches are able to synchronize themselves with an external time source. These sources include radio time signals directly driven by atomic clocks, time signals from GPS navigation satellites, the German DCF77 signal in Europe, and others. These watches are free-running most of the time, but periodically align themselves with the chosen external time source automatically, typically once a day.

Because these watches are regulated by an external time source of extraordinarily high accuracy, they are never off by more than a small fraction of a second a day (depending on the quality of their quartz movements), as long as they can receive the external time signals that they expect. Additionally, their long-term accuracy is comparable to that of the external time signals they receive, which in most cases (such as GPS signals and special radio transmissions of time based on atomic clocks) is better than one second in three million years. For all practical purposes, then, radio-controlled wristwatches keep near perfect time.

Movements of this type synchronize not only the time of day but also the date, the leap-year status of the current year, and the current state of daylight saving time (on or off). They obtain all of this information from the external signals that they receive. Because of this continual automatic updating, they never require manual setting or resetting.

A disadvantage of radio-controlled movements is that they cannot synchronize if radio reception conditions are poor. Even in this case, however, they will simply run autonomously with the same accuracy as a normal quartz watch until they are next able to synchronize.

Recently on Horomundi There has been discussion on if people should wear Luxury Watches outside there homes…

Some people Say:

“I know myself with my small collection that I feign to think of scratching or nicking any one of them so I baby them as best I can.

Some of the higher ticket AP’s make me cringe to think of bringing them anywhere where they could get damaged.. like the corner of a filing cabinet for instance.. or the stucco siding on a house.. a railing on a balcony..

How do you guys / gals tolerate getting scratches and nicks on your watches? How do you even bring some of the 15k ones out of the house?

is this a legitimate worry? or am I just suffering from some phobia? “

While Others Say:

You mean there people who only wear their watches at home and never take them outside ? That’s be like buying a nice car and never driving it and leaving it in the garage.

Not me!

I wear mine as much as possible. At work, at play and in the gym. The only time I don’t wear them is when I’m doing DIY at home or riding my bike. ”

You decide!

This week I am seeing a ton of Audemar Piguet’s in the Hollywood scene. A recently Usher was seen sporting an AP Royal Oak while out and about with friends. This may not come as any big surprise as I understand Usher is actually on the AP payroll.

Also this week, Brandon Davis , the uber-rich oil heir and regular Hilton sister accessory was photograph in Hollywood wearing a AP Royal Oak Offshore as he walked toward his car wearing a tasteless t-shirt (If you want to know what the t-shirt said email me).

Other Audemars Piguet fans are Hollywood superstars such as Tom Cruise who has been known to wear an AP chronograph as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger whose has his own signature Audemars Piguet T3 watch.

Audemars Piguet founded by Jules Audemars & Edouard Piguet in 1875.Audemars Piguet watches are hand crafted some of the most prominent watchmakers in the world. The technical and aesthetic performances of all Audemars Piguet watches within their Classic collection have their roots in the tradition of Haute Horlogerie, a domain where Audemars Piguet Watches have played a pioneering role since it was first founded in 1875. In spite of their expansion, Audemars Piguet is family owned and every watch is still handmade. Alongside Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet Watches are considered to be one of the “big three” manufacturers of the finest watches.

Audemars Piguet Watches is a major Swiss watch manufacturer. Their watches include classic watches and the Royal Oak casual watches. They have received great attention for their Terminator 3 watch.The roots of the famous Swiss watch manufacturer date back to the 19th century, when, in 1875, the young 23 year old Jules Audemars met another young man by the name of Edward-August Piguet who was at that time only 21 years old. The historical meeting place of the two was Vallee de Joux, which is considered to be the cradle of prestige watch-making. Their hometown was Le Brassus. When they graduated school they went to Vallee de Joux to start working in their favorite field of watch manufacturing. Thus Jules Audemars started producing component parts for movements and Edward-August got the job of a repasseur, which means he was a master watchmaker, whose job it was to make the final regulation of the timepiece. They founded a firm, the name of which was later known as Audemars, Piguet et Cie. In this great Swiss Manufacture of watches, the torch of the founders of the company continues to be carried by their successors in hot line. Since 1882, the members of the Audemars families and Piguet sat always at the Board of directors and, thus, directly or indirectly contributed to the destiny of the company. The high engagement ordered by the respect of the family tradition, the direct bond between the watch and the surname, imply a particularly important responsibility as for quality and, so with the prestige of the manufactured goods of this famous Vallée of Joux. Since many centuries, it is in the Vallée de Joux that Audemars and Piguet are established. Their major rooting in the history of this extraordinary region, in the life with the Valley of Joux and especially in the clock industry, confers, today like yesterday, its print of excellence to the company Audemars Piguet. The immense clock making tradition of the Valley of Joux continues to live, without division, these watches which have the privilege to raise this nomprestigieux. Audemars as well as Piguet continue to be proud for it: a struck watch their names concretizes not only the lesson of the highest school of the fine clock industry of precision, but still nowadays conceals a good part of the eminent clock making know-how of Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet. Their business started with Audemars managing the production and monitoring the technical part and Piguet focused his attention towards sales. Instant success was not to come. The Audemars Piguet trademark was registered later in 1882 and only seven years later the company was officially founded. Then Audemars Piguet et Cie achieved success in becoming one of the first largest employers for watch-making in the whole Canton of Vaud, which is one of the cantons located in the southwestern part of Switzerland. The two talented watchmakers focused their attention mainly towards the production of qualitative, precision timekeeping watches with sophisticated mechanisms. After the company was officially founded it opened its new branch in the heart of Switzerland – Geneva. Thus, since 1889 the company started creating its own in-house component parts and assembling within its factory as well. The process of controlling the quality of timepieces maintained at a high level, and only the best products were launched into the market. In the period between 1894 and 1899 the company produced about 1,200 timepieces. These included some very complex watches. When Audemars passed away in 1918 as well as his partner in 1919, the company continued its activity steadily growing and expanding its fame. Later Audemars Piguet launched several watches like the smallest minute repeater in the world and a jumping [-second hand pocket watch. In 1925 Audemars Piguet amazed the world of haute horlogerie with its thinnest pocket watch. Only three years later the company created the first skeleton watch in the world. As the success of the company’s business was rising its customers became Tiffany & Co, Cartier and Bulgari. At the end of 1920’s and the beginning of 1930’s the success of Audemars Piguet started dimming. The crash of the stock market as well as the Depression slowed down the development of many Swiss companies.

During the World War II the famous Swiss watch manufacturer was able to come back on the market by producing one of its well-known models – an ultra-thin chronograph, the heart of which was Calibre 2003. The sales of Audemars Piguet started growing in the 5th and 6th decades of the 20th century. Together with Jaeger LeCoultre it was able to design the thinnest automatic movement. The latter included a 21 carat gold rotor placed in the center. The legendary “Royal Oak” was produced five years later, in 1972. The designer of the watch was the Gerald Genta - also a well-known person in the watch industry.

Today the company maintains one of the leading positions in the watch-making branch. It owns about 40 per cent of Jaeger LeCoultre and every timepiece manufactured in-house is still made using the old-fashioned hand-made technique.

The Audemars Piguet’s manufactory achieved so much success that now it is part of the so-called “big trio” of watch manufacture along with Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin.

Since 1999, Audemars Piguet has been the sponsor of the Queen Elizabeth II Cup, a Group One Thoroughbred horse race in Hong Kong, New Territories, China.

Audemars Piquet are also a sponsor of the Alinghi Sailing Team which won the America’s Cup in 2003

Audemars Piguet is referenced several times in the song titled, “Upgrade U” by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z (”Let me upgrade ya, Audemars Piguet ya”)

Audemars Piguet is also referenced in the song titled, “We Fly High” by Jim Jones.

The AP Royal Oak is referenced in the song “Big Spender” by Freeway featuring Jay-Z (”Rose gold Royal Oak, Audemars, okay”)