Disappearing Acts

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the thinnest of them all? Since 2014, that’s the question the world’s two most storied jewellery houses, Bvlgari and Piaget, have been trying to answer, locked in a battle to create the slimmest watches on the market. But it’s no vanity project. Manufacturing such ultra-thin timepieces requires an extraordinary level of technical prowess.

- Paige Reddinger

This year, if you judge by sheer lack of size, Piaget won the round with the world’s thinnest hand-wound mechanical watch. But the comparison is not always apples to apples, and Bvlgari landed a dazzling combination of its own by pairing a one-two punch of high complications within wafer-thin proportions. Here, the skinny on the brands’ latest rounds of downsizing.

Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept

VITAL STATISTICS

Price: Upon request

Case thickness: 2mm

Thinner than: A strand of spaghetti

Movement thickness: 2mm

Case diameter: 41mm

Power reserve: 40 hours

When Piaget debuted its two millimetre thick Altiplano Ultimate Concept watch in 2018, it was so slim it looked like something that might come in handy for picking a lock. (See for yourself: if you combine just 50 of this magazine’s pages, you’ll get a sense of its barely there proportions.) Many assumed the concept could never make it into production, but this year the house proved the doubters wrong by offering the time-only watch in series production.