Perched on a balcony high above a crowd of retailers, clients, and press, president Thierry Stern lorded over the official unveiling of the brand’s first new collection in 25 years, . The October event, held about an hour outside Munich, was supposed to provide the first glimpse of the latest offering, but the much-anticipated reveal was spoiled when an ad for the timepiece leaked online a few days before, sending social-media commentators into a frenzy. Word of the release caught like wildfire, but the response was anything but warm.
(Even went so far as to compare it, if unfairly, to a $717 model from an English microbrand powered by a cheap Miyota movement.) None of this seems to have stopped demand for the Cubitus, and it didn’t take long for seasoned collectors to start bragging about receiving their orders. Among the first was American rapper N.
O.R.E.
, born Victor Santiago Jr., who of himself opening his two-tone Cubitus (Ref. 5821/1AR) just four days after its launch.
Even if you run watchmaking’s most revered brand, releasing a new collection is no easy feat—especially when it comes two and a half decades after the previous one. The weight of the watch world’s expectations was upon Stern’s shoulders. In response, Patek’s head honcho produced what many pundits agreed was a rather simple design; the time-and-date pieces were so straightforward, in fact, that watch enthusiasts complained they were just reinterpretations of existing Nautlius models housed in.