With new CEO Ilaria Resta at the helm of Audemars Piguet, the watch community has been holding its breath for the next limited Royal Oak Concept. This is Audemars Piguet’s rare wrist-worn experimental lab, this time subverted by the creative flair of Brooklyn-based artist Kaws.
Audemars Piguet has embraced pop culture with wild enthusiasm for the last decade, collaborating with larger-than-life players including basketball superstars and hip-hop royalty who have embraced the appearance of Spider-Man and Black Panther within the octagonal chunk of the Concept. Now, it's the turn of the artist.
Kaws, a.k.a Brina Donnelly, has been a force to reckon with after rising to fame in the 1990s with graffiti artwork that rocket-propelled him onto the pop art scene. Donnelly’s toy creations, especially the ‘Companion’, with its subverted Mickey Mouse skull-and-crossbones aesthetic, have become a strong trademark, but this is his first watch brand collab.
Within the bombastic shape of the faceted futurism of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon, Kaws’ ‘Companion’ appears trapped behind the sapphire crystal. It’s a strong monochrome image only strengthened by the brand's new movement design, which is bereft of watch hands. This time, it shows the peripheral time display through indicators on the rim of the dial.
The small indicators are titanium hour and minute hands, lumed and set on roller-guided gear wheels. But the star of the wrist show is the cartoon-skull face of ‘Companion’ with his face and hands pressed against the crystal, just above a tantalising tourbillon. The Concept case's strong modernity is slightly enlarged compared to the Spiderman and Black Panther versions, boasting a multi-faceted titanium case of 43mm. The Audemars Piguet x Kaws Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon 'Companion' is limited to 250 pieces and retails at CHF 200,000.
Parallel to Kaws’ ‘Companion’ being trapped within the haute complexity of the Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon, there is a much larger presence at Le Brassus. Until the 20th of December, a monochrome ‘Companion’ of 11 meters has taken residence atop the Audemars Piguet HQ in the quiet town of Le Brassus. KAWS: HOLIDAY returns to Europe to coincide with the release of the Concept after recent stops in Shanghai and Indonesia, inviting us to consider how AP is interlinked with the world's wider (pop) culture.
