It?s taken two decades but Patek Philippe?s waterbaby has finally shed the ?Nautilus Lite? reputation and emerged as a heavyweight in the men?s watch arena

By Alex Doak

It may only have been 20 years ago, but 1997 feels like a different time entirely. It was the year Tony Blair swept into Downing Street on a landslide and a D:Ream song; Steve Jobs was back at the helm of Apple and James Cameron?s logic-defying weepy Titanic (you could have got both of them on that door; it?s been proven) cleaned up at the Oscars.
There was optimism, a youthful buoyancy, a sense that the grey-suited grown-ups were being consigned to the cultural scrap heap. An attitude that obviously even made it to Switzerland, because 1997 was the year Patek Philippe launched the Aquanaut. In many ways, it was a solution to a problem no one had with Patek. The launch of the Nautilus back in 1976 meant that there was already a sporty option for those wanting to buy into the brand but for whom a Calatrava was too staid.
However, maybe taking its cue from the release of the Royal Oak Offshore in 1993 and from the success of Hublot, Patek decided to play with the concept of what constitutes a luxury timepiece by mixing steel and rubber.
The case design of the Nautilus was the starting point, but rendered in a simple three-part design rather than the more complex two-part construction of the original. The slim indices were replaced with chunky numerals and, in a first for Patek, the strap was switched from ...