AROUND THE WORLD

You haven't traversed the globe properly until you have done so with a Patek Philippe as your companion.

- Alvin Wong

By now, you'd be well-versed in the means and methods of luxury air travel. Would the call be to Jet Vista or TAG Aviation? Is it going to be a Gulfstream for an urgent business flight to whisk your core team to Shanghai? Or the Bombardier Global 5000 for a New York holiday with the kids and in-laws? Whichever permutation you desire, your demands are the same: to get to these places as fast as you can, with minimal fuss and cloistered in supreme comfort. To have the world, as it were, within arm's reach.

You'd have to pack, too, of course. If you knew any better-and we are sure you do-a Patek Philippe World Time watch would be one of the first things you'd have on you. A travel companion that needs no introduction, it is a watch that not only shows that you have arrived as an elite traveller, but literally funnels the entire planet, with all its beautiful diversity and idiosyncrasies, into a piece of mechanical art that is no larger than a postage stamp.

FLIGHT PLAN

Right from the start, when Patek Philippe introduced its first World Time model in 1939, the Reference 1415 HU (Heure Universelle), the company was bent on setting the bar high for its continent-crossing wristwatch. Just as opulent cabins, attentive service and in-flight gourmet meals were par for the course, so too, was the spirit of timeless elegance that the Reference 1415 HU sought to evoke as the horological expression of aviation's golden age.

And it wasn't just about jetting in gilded style, either. Patek Philippe enlisted the help of Geneva-based watchmaker, Louis Cottier, to make the Reference 1415 HU an epochal travel timepiece allowing travellers to tell the exact time across multiple world cities at a glance.

Cottier had distilled the 19th-century idea of the world being divided into 24 time zones (so that the entire world could operate on a global standard time) in a mechanism that would show exactly that.