As we all know, Piaget was pride for itself on its long-term achievements in crafting remarkably thin watches at past. Usually they could rule in this game, sometimes by greater and sometimes rather minuscule margins. However, we have witnessed Piaget lose focus not just of the luxury watch market generally, but also of its true self in recent years. The Polo S saw mixed reception at best, the 60th anniversary, totally ordinary Altiplanos displayed a depressing lack of creativity, while the record-thin automatic Altiplano and these two marquetry stone-dialed tourbillon beauties have keeping the faintest positive idea of Piaget. The ultra-delicate shape of the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept watch brings another sparkle hope for this brand. 
After seeing this new, one of a kind exercise in thin watchmaking, we thought of a few questions. How does this Ultimate Concept fit into the world of Piaget? What difference will it actually make for them or the luxury watch market? Will we ever see something like this in production?
Certainly it does fit into Piaget, because it’s a thin watch produced by a brand whose modern image was largely built on thin replica watches. It’s also fitting as Bulgari has been taking all the limelight lately when it comes to breaking thin watch records – they have totally blindsided Piaget and took over in just a few years, taking so long time to develop the products so fast this years.
It’s difficult to say whether it will make a difference in the luxury watch market. But in the sense it does make a difference that it gives a brief – and hence passing – proof that Piaget is alive, even if not well. Halo products (or “ultimate concepts”) can make a difference, but I think it is a rather moot exercise when a larger selection of actually available and relatively competitively priced products can be your choice. However, if you want some super niche, neatly made, rare piece, Piaget is still a strong brand with main collections are concerned by some people.
In order to achieve and maintain the Altiplano Ultimate Concept’s remarkable thinness, Piaget had to use a few clever and tricky engineering solutions. This includes a base-plate/caseback design that merges the two pieces into one, with the wheels and other components being fitted directly to the caseback. This ingenious solution is not new, factly, it made its debut in ETA’s Delirium Tremens record-thin watch in the late 1970s and has been used by Swatch ever since, along with a few other brands and watches, including Piaget’s famed 900P caliber as well.
Piaget took things to the next level and removed as much of the top plate as possible. The barrel and many other parts function similarly to the style of a flying tourbillon works – they are only supported and fixed from underneath, but not from above. Of course it wouldn’t be possible with just one jewel underneath and nothing but the hopes of engineers above, so many of these parts use ball bearings underneath. As such, overall jewel count dropped to 13 only.
We noticed the fact was that everything was made as slim as possible: many of the wheels are now just 0.12mm thick, coming in at about 60% of their usual selves. The mainspring also lost its drum and cover, so we can see easily the wound of Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept is – power reserve, by the way, is an impressive 44 hours.
With the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept having a case that is just 2mm thick (that’s the full case, not just the movement), the case was to be designed as rigid as it could possibly be. Craft it from ordinary materials and you could feasibly bend the case, also the wheels and the movement were damaged. While using a soft metal like gold and strapping the cheap replica watch onto your wrist tightly enough could break the watch for once easily. To solve this problem perfectly, Piaget found the elegant solution of not removing the strap but rather using a cobalt based alloy for the case and base-plate, making the whole thing rigid enough. What I should say is that Piaget was the first one to do this at present.
