Every year we have our "new year's resolutions", but given the holiday season has just ended, which is always filled with the standard commercialism and retail therapy, I thought it might be worthwhile to give my perspective on the subject. Specifically when we refer to a certain type of spending as "materialism" - this ties in nicely with the watch world, since 2016 was officially the worst year on record since the early 80's!

First, what is materialism?

It's inconceivable to think that this category didn't even exist until the 1970s.

Up to that time, Stainless Steel was used in the typical "Tool" or "Dive" watches. Dress watches were also made in stainless steel, but then those would never have been considered "luxury" dress watches.

So, when Audemars Piguet decided to create a new watch, one that would deserve to be called an Audemars Piguet, one that would merge "Sport" and "Luxury", and in essence create a whole new category of watch, a Stainless Steel case must have been an obvious choice.

But, given the fact the future of the company (arguably) hung in the balance of this "new watch", it must have also been tense times at AP.

Speaking of icons, has there ever been any watch more iconic than the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak?

Nope, I didn't think so. 

But to understand why, we really need to go back in time. Back to the early 1970's when the watch industry was just coming out of it's golden era, and about to enter into its darkest (the Quartz crisis).

Audemars Piguet, one of the fabled 'Holy Trinity' of Swiss watch companies needed to make a change and what they wanted was to shake things up.

To do this, they asked Gérald Genta (whom had been designing their watches since the early 50's), to design a luxury sport watch. The result, the ultra thin Royal Oak.