Piaget quotes the sixties – Diepresse.com

1969 was not just the year of the moon landing. For Piaget it was a departure into a new age: At the watch fair in Basel, the Maison presented its so -called « collection of the 21st century » under the motto « What has never been done before ». The focus was on watches that looked like sculptural jewelry – sometimes as a wide cuff, sometimes as a freely swinging Sautoir.

The Swiss designer Jean-Claude Gueit was at the center of this design redesign. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he redefined the genre of the jewelry clock. Materials such as lapislazuli, jade, tiger eye or onyx gave the watch a new vocabulary. Gueit designed with radical clarity, its timepieces played with volume, symmetry and graphic geometry. The boundaries between watchmaking and jewelry dissolved. Function and shape merged, gold became an area, time display to the ornament.

In this context, a motif was also created that should prove to be iconic: the trapeze with its unusual housing shape and its beveled pages. Like the famous trapezoidal dress by Yves Saint Laurent, which had changed the fashion silhouette years earlier, Gueit’s Trapez was also a break with conventions.

reminiscence

Almost 60 years later, Piaget brings this vision back with the new “Sixtie” collection – and transfers the design from that time to the present. The housing is architecturally clearly built, the dial is minimalistically structured and dispenses with unnecessary elements. Only two Roman indices, at six and twelve o’clock, break through the calm of the silk matt background. The « Sixtie » is very flat at 6.5 mm. This is made possible by a quartz plant. Two housing variants are available: stainless steel and rose gold, optionally combined. If you want, you can also choose a diamond -occupied version. The bezel is particularly striking with so-called Godons-a characteristic design element that alludes legendary « Black Tie » from the 1970s, which once adorned Andy Warhol’s wrist and is named after him. The bracelet is fully integrated and consists of trapezoidal limbs – a continuation of the form of housing. It strengthens the idea of ​​the watch – not just in length, but into time.