Patek Philippe

Patek introduced the Nautilus in 1976, drawn by Gerald Genta and shaped, as the house still describes it, after a ship's porthole. The original ref. 3700/1 was 42mm across and 7.6mm deep, water resistant to 120m, and sold in steel on an integrated bracelet at a time when Patek was known for gold dress watches; it was later nicknamed the Jumbo. The rounded octagonal bezel, the two ears at the case sides and the horizontally embossed dial still identify it. The family now runs from a time and date model through the chronograph and the travel time flyback chronograph, the moon phase with power reserve, and annual and perpetual calendars, with smaller diamond set versions alongside.

The Aquanaut made its debut in 1997 as the more casual companion to the Nautilus, keeping the rounded octagonal bezel but dropping the ears and usually sitting on a strap rather than a bracelet. The dial carries an embossed checkerboard pattern that runs on into the composite strap, which Patek describes as resistant to wear, salt water and UV radiation. Cases are steel, white gold or rose gold, worked in contrasting polished and satin finishes, with applied numerals and luminescent coating on most dials. Aquanaut Luce arrived in 2004 as the smaller, diamond set half of the family, and the complications now include travel time, a flyback chronograph, an annual calendar with moon phases and a minute repeater.

Complications is Patek Philippe's own catalogue division, covering watches that do something beyond telling the time without going as far as the Grand Complications. Chronographs sit here alongside world time, travel time, moon phase and annual calendar models, and the regulator dials that put the hours and seconds on subdials and sweep the minutes from the centre. Cases are round and classical, in gold, platinum or steel, so the interest is in what the dial is doing rather than the shape holding it. Patek describes its chronographs as reading speed, distance and pulse without arithmetic, taken from scales printed on the dial.

The Calatrava opened in 1932 with the reference 96, a plain round watch that Patek describes as drawn on the Bauhaus principle that function determines the form of an object, and the house dates the line from it. The name comes from the Calatrava cross, the emblem registered as the company trademark in 1887. The look is deliberately quiet: a round case with a slim bezel, applied markers or Breguet numerals, and nothing on the dial competing for attention. The reference 6119 carries the hobnail Clous de Paris pattern guilloched on its bezel, and the reference 5227 hides its sapphire back under a dust cover on an invisible hinge.

Patek Philippe launched the Twenty~4 in 1999 as its first collection made only for women, and the original cuff is still in the line, a rectangular case in two tiers with two rows of diamonds on the bezel and an entirely polished bracelet. Those cuff models run on the quartz calibre E15 and measure 25.1 by 30 mm. In 2018 Patek added the round Twenty~4 Automatic at 36 mm, self winding, with a sweep seconds hand and a date aperture, the bezel set with 160 diamonds. A perpetual calendar with moon phases now sits in that same round case.

Patek Philippe has made world time watches since the 1930s, built on the mechanism the Swiss watchmaker Louis Cottier devised in 1931 to show all 24 zones on a single dial. A city ring names one place per zone, a 24 hour ring inside it separates day from night, and the central hands read the time for whichever city sits at 12. A single pusher at 10 o'clock selects the city and its time zone. The family today runs from time only models at 36 mm through the 5330G, which indexes the date to local time, to the 5935A flyback chronograph in steel.

Patek Philippe built the first perpetual calendar wristwatch in 1925, on a movement made in 1898 for a pendant watch, and brought the complication into series production in 1941 with the reference 1518 perpetual calendar chronograph. The mechanism carries the long and short months and the leap year cycle, and Patek states that it needs no correction until 2100. One layout recurs across the family, with day and month in apertures below 12 and the date read by a hand around a moon phase at 6, while other references set the calendar out in subdials read by hands, run it in a single line across the dial, or sweep the date on a retrograde hand. They sit under Grand Complications in the catalogue, in round gold and platinum cases.

Patek Philippe patented the annual calendar in 1996 and introduced it in the reference 5035, a self-winding watch that reads the long and short months by itself and needs one correction a year, at the end of February. It sits between a simple date and a perpetual calendar, since it knows which months run to 30 and 31 days but not February. The tell is three apertures for day, date and month set along the arc of a circle below 12, with a moon phase and 24 hour indication at 6 on many references. Patek files the family under Complications, and it runs from plain round gold references through the regulator, travel time and flyback chronograph versions to diamond set ladies models.