The Fourth Wheel, Issue 87

What a brand new Patek Philippe design could look like, plus - yes - horological drag names

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that must remind you that the January sale ends soon, so this is your LAST CHANCE to sign up for a discounted subscription. Full details below. Next week’s - which is free to all, as the first Friday of the month - will be back to business as usual.

Thank you to those who expressed an opinion in last week’s poll (should The Fourth Wheel launch a vintage-dedicated spin-off? You can still vote!) The majority are in favour, but a number were less keen. If that’s you, I’d love to know why. Drop me a message if you’ve got the time.

---

---

LAST CHANCE! I’m offering a 30 per cent discount on paid subs this month. You’ve seen it before, but just to remind you of the sales pitch:

No ads. No-one rifling through your data. No outside influence over what I write. A weekly newsletter that majors on expert analysis, journalistic investigation, honest opinion and really bad puns. If you want to have the conversation about whether content should cost money, I am here in the comments, but for the price of a pint and a packet of crisps you get to read something you won’t read anywhere else. Plus you’ll get early access and preferential treatment when I launch other ideas, and they are coming this year, I promise you that.

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

What Was The Greatest Era Of Chronograph Watchmaking?
2023 In Review
What To Expect In 2024
The Watch I Wore Most In 2023
The Best And Worst Watch Brand Websites

---

Recently Mark Kauzlarich wrote this piece for Hodinkee, musing on what a potential new model line from Patek Philippe might look like. President Thierry Stern has teased just such a thing a few times, and despite Mark getting his caveats in with gusto¹ he gives it a good shot. I decided to write something of a response to his piece, and in the course of thinking about what kind of watch Patek might bring to the world in 2024, share some wider thoughts about the brand’s design approach in general.

I also began the year by saying I wasn’t going to be making predictions. Turns out even that was a lousy prediction. It’s too much fun to speculate. I will say this, though: the whole premise of Mark’s piece is a tiny bit shaky, in my view. Just because Thierry Stern has said it’s coming doesn’t make it so - watch brands are notorious for pushing big releases further down the road² and if the sense in the Plan les Ouates boardroom is that 2024 is shaping up to be an inauspicious year, it might be held until the market is a bit happier. Equally, I would not be at all surprised if Patek waits until Sept/October to reveal it, rather than sharing the limelight at Watches & Wonders.

But assuming that something is definitely coming, the question is: what? Well, you can start by looking at what Patek Philippe already has. This is where we start veering away from the predictions, because the minute you really assess the brand’s product catalogue, you can’t avoid the conclusion that, well, by most brands’ standards it’s all a bit of a mess. You’ve got throwback pilot’s watches, mid-century classics, gem-set sports watches… the variety is enormous. Rococo engravings sit alongside neo-industrial finishes; Art Deco and Art Nouveau get a look-in, and Bauhaus-derived minimalism cohabits with bold block-coloured gem-setting that the Memphis Group wouldn’t have turned away. It has, depending on how strict you are, at least a dozen different layouts for a calendar dial. This is usually cited as evidence of its technical supremacy - right enough - but you can’t argue it’s evidence of a clear and overarching design language. I count ten different typefaces used for hour numerals alone, across the 158 current references.

I think that’s what you call ‘something for everyone’

The more interesting question is whether this is actually a positive - most brands have far more orthodox model families, better organised collections, and more coherent design language across their entire output, and yet Patek rules the roost. Does its somewhat pick-and-mix product strategy give it an edge, or does it enjoy its success in spite of its haphazard range, leaning simply on its peerless brand reputation and the marketing foundation that it consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s? Individual watches, or watch families, have evolved gently over the years, but the real point of consistency is the advertising, marketing, visual merchandising and tone of voice - the brand image, in other words. So I can’t help but feel it’s the latter option, although I’m open to hearing the counter-argument.

So the answer to the question ‘what does Patek already have ?’ is… everything? Everything except perhaps order and logic. It undoubtedly also has a hero, in the Nautilus, a faithful sidekick in the Aquanaut, and a cult favourite in the Golden Ellipse³. Here’s another contradiction of Patek Philippe product organisation: some watches are grouped by case design and given a proper name, but at least half are not. They’re lumped together as Complications or Grand Complications, which aren’t product families understood by the consumer but really internal designations that made it out into the world. So a Grand Master Chime sits in the same bucket as a 7040/250G minute repeater, when really the two have nothing in common save a familiarity with high-end watchmaking.