UBS

An icon isn’t born overnight, or so they say. But in at least this instance, it was. In 1970, a native of Switzerland’s “Valley of Complications” named Georges Golay was at the helm of the then relatively small Audemars Piguet. In search of expansion, he reached a deal with the powerful distribution network of the industry cartel Société Suisse pour l’Industrie Horlogère (which included Omega and Tissot). But the night before the industry’s largest tradeshow, three executives of the SSIH came to Golay with a demand: they needed a luxury sports watch, made in steel, and unlike anything ever done before. Oh, and they needed it now.

Golay turned to a man who himself would become a legend in his own right, Gérald Genta, and at 4 PM that day, asked him to rise to the occasion. A misunderstanding about the brief—Genta believed Golay wanted a watch “… whose water resistance has never been done before,” led to the faux-screws on the bezel, like on a diving bell. The result the next morning was something bold, angular, and aggressive. Simply put, it was a watch that changed watch design forever.

Yes, other brands quickly raced for designs to match the sportiness of that original “Jumbo” Royal Oak that was released in 1972—a steel watch that was more expensive than any equivalent watch in gold—and the nearly perfect balance of bold design and thin, bracelet-like wearability. In hindsight, its success seemed like a foregone conclusion, but it took a specific kind of collector to make it an icon.

The famous designer Karl Lagerfeld called the Royal Oak a “fetish object” and the watch he’s “worn for 35 years.” He customized his early A-Series “Jumbo,” made in 1973, with a black PVD coating. That watch was sold by Phillips on the 50th Anniversary of the model in 2022 for just under $1 million. However, it’s worth noting that the Royal Oak took years to become popular and was initially seen as unconventional and expensive when it first came out. Even Patek Philippe waited four years before releasing their own sports watch response, the Nautilus. Despite this rocky start, the legend of the Royal Oak would only grow over the decades and into one of the most coveted watches among collectors and celebrities around the world.