After the whirlwind that was SIHH 2018, it’s sometimes hard to get your specific thoughts on a collection in order. It’s especially hard when one of the world’s biggest brands drops a mammoth collection of new novelties during the show. So many that it was easy to overlook some of the less flashy models. The big news going into the Geneva fair for Audemars Piguet was the Royal Oak Offshore’s 25th birthday; less than a week later, the talking point for the brand ? and maybe of the entire show ? revolved around an ultra-thin perpetual calendar piece unique that synthesized the high masculinity of a Royal Oak into a high-tech concept watch that measured in at 6.33 mm (for reference, your typical Jumbo comes in at 8.3 mm), making it the thinnest perpetual calendar in existence. 1.) There’s a lot to discuss here ? mainly the technical details behind how AP was able to accomplish this which I discussed in part here. But the main question I had in the aftermath of SIHH was: Why now" In the watchmaking industry, that is often a fruitless question, but it is curious that AP decided to drop only its second ever “Research and Development” model during this year’s SIHH especially when it had the potential to overshadow the brand’s main focus: the Royal Oak Offshore’s anniversary. The all-platinum model looks like it has the potential to be a future production model as it was given an official reference number (26586PT.OO...