Inside Patek Philippe’s Tie-less ‘Urban Chic’ Cubitus Launch Party in Munich
Last month, I flew to Munich for 48 hours to attend the launch of Patek Philippe’s new Cubitus collection of square-faced watches. The first clue that the event, which was held in a grand industrial space on the outskirts of town on Oct. 17, would be different from the refined and intimate Patek gatherings of years past came the week before my departure, when I received an email containing my itinerary. The dress code for the big party where the collection would be officially revealed? “Urban chic.”
An accompanying PDF contained mood boards for both ladies and gents, featuring lots of dark-colored blazers, knee-length dresses, and minimalist flair—no suits in sight.
The second clue came hours before the party from Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern himself, during a 30-minute press roundtable in the sunny, minimalist offices of Patek Philippe’s German subsidiary in Munich’s Old Town. After explaining to our group of six American journalists why he decided to create the Cubitus, the brand’s first entirely new family of watches in 25 years (“I always wanted to have a square shape,” he said), Stern urged us to have fun in the next room as we tried on the line’s three new timepieces: a steel time-and-date model with an olive-green dial (ref. 5821/1A), a rose-gold and steel time-and-date model with a blue dial (ref. 5821/1AR), and a platinum grand date edition with a blue dial (ref. 5822P).
All three pieces feature aesthetic echoes of the Nautilus—“It’s my DNA,” Stern said. “I have to use it”—which explains why so many commenters have dubbed the Cubitus “the square Nautilus.” (Note the positioning of the small seconds and moonphase on the grand date model, reminiscent of the dial layout of the Nautilus 5712.)
“And now I think you have to see the watch,” Stern told us. “Between the picture and the reality on your wrist, you will see the difference.”
The comment seemed to subtly acknowledge an inconvenient truth: That everyone, everywhere had already seen the watch, when images of the Cubitus ad campaign in Fortune magazine leaked the weekend before the launch, drawing torrents of online criticism.
“It’s quite cool, I must say,” Stern continued. “And the second thing that will be quite cool is the party tonight. I hope you will like it. It’s different.”
Different how, you might ask?
“I feel naked because it’s the first time that we have a party without ties,” Stern explained. He gestured to Jerome Pernici, Patek’s commercial and marketing director who was sitting in a chair behind him. “It’s the first time in my whole life that I see him without a tie and [with] sneakers. These are real, new things.”
That evening, I joined dozens of journalists from around the world on a bus that took us from the center of Munich to Bergson Kunstkraftwerk, an event space located about 40 minutes northwest of the city center. By the time we pulled up, somewhere on the order of 600 guests had already descended on the enormous space—which seemed bigger than the hangar for the Spruce Goose!—to await the big reveal. They included Stern’s 24-year-old son, Adrien, and plenty of high-profile collectors, like Zach Lu, the power buyer who picked up the Tiffany Blue Nautilus at Phillips in early 2022. (As it happens, Lu and I had sat across the aisle from each other on our Lufthansa flight from Los Angeles.) But there were low-key watch lovers, too, like a 30-something German with whom I chatted about his first impressions of the Cubitus. (“I don’t have the buying power,” he said.)
Beyond the fact that the space teemed with men, some wearing jackets and open collared shirts, others in baseball caps and sneakers, what struck me immediately was the predominant demographic: I spotted only one silver-haired gentleman all evening. The following morning, my 31-year-old driver alluded to what I’d been thinking as we zoomed to the airport: “I heard that 90 percent of the people at the party were under 40 years old,” he said.
The comment called to mind something that Stern had said in response to a pointed question at our roundtable from Chris Rovzar of Bloomberg Pursuits: “Are you aiming for a new audience with this watch?”
Stern’s answer was unequivocal. “The target, yes, is to have a new audience,” he said. “But without losing the other one. This type of audience will be the young ones who are starting their businesses, who are moving, active people. And this is what you will see tonight, actually.”
Later that night, his remarks came to life in a short film the brand showed around 8 p.m., as Stern teed up the official launch of the Cubitus: “This is the little brother coming in the family of the sporty elegant watches,” he said to the crowd from the upper level of the cavernous event space. There was something almost papal about the set-up: Thierry the Benevolent addressing his disciples.
The one-minute clip, part of the brand’s 28-year-old Generations campaign, featured a handsome young man—early 30s, curly brown hair—at a rooftop party in a city that looked a lot like New York. “If I stay true to myself and follow my instincts, my legacy will be looked on kindly by my friends, my family and, hopefully, generations to come,” said the voiceover.
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The words might as well have come from Stern himself. The Cubitus launch feels like the culmination of a deeply personal mission for Patek’s 54-year-old president. (During our press event, I was struck by how often Stern used the word “I” to explain the collection’s existence, as opposed to the universal “we.”)
Back at the press roundtable, even as Stern acknowledged that “85 percent of the watches sold around the world are round,” he made clear that he was committed to creating a square watch. He’d assessed the marketplace and noted that other brands had made some “cool” square watches, “like the Monaco,” but that it was “too thick.” So, he persisted.
“It was really something I wanted to do,” Stern explained, before divulging the real reason he embraced the unexpected shape.
“You have to move on with your client,” he said. “I can not only stay with the older clients, and I will not lose them, but I also know that at one point, they will be gone, and the new one should also be part of it.
“The target is to add those clients,” he added. “They may know Patek Philippe already. Their parents know Patek Philippe. But they didn’t find the right watch for them. So by adding a shape like this, maybe we will have them. Maybe. We will convince them to say, ‘Hey, it’s not bad. Something new.’ It’s a guess. It’s a strategy that we can put in place. Why not? I think it’s a good one.”
Indeed, the commercial success of the new collection is all but guaranteed (“Every single Cubitus will sell the moment it touches a retailer’s door. And that’s the world in which we live today,” wrote Hodinkee’s Ben Clymer). What remains unclear is just how many young people will actually be able to afford it. The collection opens at $41,243 for the steel time-and-date model, goes up to $61,276 for the bi-metal edition, and peaks at $88,380 for the complicated grand date in platinum.
“That’s a car,” my new German collector friend said when I told him about the pricing. “I don’t know if I have changed or the market has changed, but I’m not willing to spend that amount of money anymore on a rather simple, time-only watch without any exclusive specialties or mechanics.”
Stern, for his part, does not seem worried. “The advice that we will give to the retailers is find or allocate those watches to newcomers,” he said at our presser, even as he acknowledged the reality: The first people to receive the watch would “be all the VIPs and the big clients of the retailer. And they will come and say, ‘Boom, I’m a big client of yours. I’m a big collector. I would like to be the first one to have it.’ And guess what? The retailer will say, ‘Yes, of course.’”
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