Piaget's latest view, the Emperador Coussin Tourbillon Automatic represents

To enhance a timepiece's beauty, the designers at Piaget not so simply reduce its size. "Our business is to create thin and quite elegant men's watches," says company CEO Philippe Leopold-Metzger. "The technical portion of watchmaking makes it possible for the observe to be stunning. But technique is not, in itself, the purpose."

If a slender profile is the greatest aesthetic goal, then Piaget's latest look at, the Emperador Coussin Tourbillon Automated (price available upon request) represents the absolute state in the artwork. At a little over a centimeter thick, the observe is the thinnest self-winding tourbillon on the market. Nevertheless this model showcases its technical sophistication in ways other Piaget timepieces do not. The tourbillon is built with an open-worked building - a configuration gaining widespread popularity among collectors - that displays the movement through a transparent sapphire dial. Moreover, Piaget's style team decided to move the winding rotor towards the dial alongside the tourbillon carriage. This arrangement further complicated the engineering challenges already posed by the company's requirement that the Emperador Coussin set a world record for slimness.

Fortunately, the designers were able to draw on the substantial trove of ultrathin assemblies that Piaget has produced in recent years. The movement is actually a complex amalgamation of these examples - and a intriguing illustration of the ways in which computer style technology has enabled look at manufacturers to redeploy existing elements in new offerings. Many in the internal elements - including the automatic winding system, going train, and setting system - were lifted in the ultrathin 1208P, the world's thinnest automatic motion, which the company released last year, while the tourbillon cage is borrowed in the 600P motion, first introduced in 2003, which still holds the thinness record for manual-wind tourbillons.

The technical staff in Switzerland's Canton of Jura put the finishing touches on this new motion in collaboration with Piaget's design studio in Geneva, which additional modernist touches, such as matching sunray patterns on the upper plate, sapphire dial, and rotor. These details, such as the slim dimensions with the case, are surely striking; yet the eye of the experienced collector is inevitably drawn towards the movement's intriguing layout. "Hopefully," says Leopold-Metzger, "[Piaget] will benefit from the return of elegance to our watchmaking world." Even so, he is clearly hedging his bets by placing the company's technical acumen conspicuously on display.

Please keep the address reproduced:The Fashion Watch