Vacheron Constantin vs. Patek Philippe vs. Audemars Piguet: Which Brand Dominates the Holy Trinity Today?
You may have heard of the Holy Trinity of watchmaking. This idea has been around as long as I can remember (I’m not young), and the Holy Trinity has always included Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, and Patek Philippe. The religious nature of the analogy is apt, given the elevated status of these three brands among Switzerland’s watch houses. However, the meaning of the Holy Trinity seems to have shifted in recent years, from the best watchmakers to the best brands. There’s a lot to unpack when considering that shift.
Back in the day (let’s say up through the 1990s and into the 2000s) the Holy Trinity was a delineation of the three very best Swiss mechanical watchmakers, each of which had built its reputation by creating the most incredible timepieces of the golden era of Swiss watchmaking (roughly the 1940s and ’50s). These three houses carried historical prestige they’d built up decade after decade from consistently delivering innovation and excellence in the horological arts.
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The differences between the watches were not as evident back then. One could be forgiven for mistaking an Audemars Piguet for a Patek Philippe or a Vacheron Constantin when seen from across the table. Logos were smaller, sometimes minuscule, as were the watches themselves when compared to today’s models. Broadcasting the brand was not, it seems, all that important, while making the most precise and sophisticated watches on the planet surely was. Clients were mostly just private people (barring Duke Ellington, perhaps), not human endorsements for the brand destined to show up in horological tabloids. The focus was on quality and complexity and craft, with the brand a secondary concern. It’s a quaint notion today.
When Style Began to Supersede Substance
The 1970s saw the introduction of the steel integrated-bracelet watch: first the Gerald Genta-designed Royal Oak from Audemars Piguet in 1972; then the Genta-designed Patek Philippe Nautilus hit the market to in 1976; and finally, the Jorg Hysek-designed Vacheron Constantin 222 followed in 1977. It may be easy to write off Patek Philippe’s and Vacheron’s offerings as copies of the Royal Oak, but that ignores that these three houses had chased each other’s work for ages. Of course they would compete, always and in every way. If Audemars Piguet was trying to break into disco style, then so would Patek Philippe and, though perhaps more reluctantly and certainly more slowly, the stately Vacheron Constantin.
Perhaps the writing was on the wall in the 1970s, because all three of the integrated-bracelet watches—again, the Royal Oak, the Nautilus and the 222—used the same base movement, the ultra-thin Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 920, still the world’s thinnest auto-winding movement with a full-sized peripheral rotor. Though it was modified and decorated a little differently for each brand, it was as if when introducing their integrated-bracelet watches that Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin kind of threw in the towel on the fight for mechanical supremacy and instead went to battle over style.
When the Holy Trinity Watchmakers Became Brands
It seems now that this shift of the 1970s from mechanical to stylistic dominance has had a lasting impact on the legacies of these three brands. As communications technology sped from snail mail to today’s AI-assisted global insta-messaging—and as branding became something every 11-year-old is self-consciously doing for themselves—the focus has moved from what these companies are capable of to what their brands say in the marketplace of social capital.
Despite its decline since pandemic collectors and crypto-bros bailed out, integrated-bracelet watches remain among the most sought after timepieces. Try to buy one from Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe or Vacheron Constantin, and, unless you’ve got an in, you’ll be told to wait indefinitely. It’s ironic, given that these watches didn’t sell very well when they were released in the 1970s; the first batch of Royal Oaks apparently took well over a year to sell through, and given the small production numbers on the initial runs of all three models we can assume demand was not screaming. (It’s said that fewer than 500 222s were produces in steel and far fewer in precious metals). Today, however, these integrated-bracelet watches are, as the passé phrase goes, “total unobtanium.”
As each of these three brands situates itself within the current marketplace, it’s the steel integrated-bracelet models that act as flagship products. We might love the shapely Patek Philippe Ellipse or the stately Calatrava, but it is the Nautilus that remains the watch everyone talks about and bids up at auction. One might wonder if Audemars Piguet makes anything other than the Royal Oak, and when the brand did launch a new line with the Code 11.59 the reaction was pretty negative. Vacheron Constantin makes some of the most beautiful dress watches in the industry, and the Overseas (a descendant of the 222) has become the closest to a hit watch Vacheron has ever had—and yet, the Overseas is not the 1970s model, but dates to just 1996.
As these trendy watches popped to the forefront of the collective horological consciousness around 2017 or so, it was impossible not to notice that the focus of the Holy Trinity had shifted away from watchmaking per se toward style and its conjoined sibling brand.
Think back to the 1940s when Patek Philippe was churning out maybe 10 of its remarkable reference 1518 perpetual calendar chronograph each year, this the flagship model that showed the grand accomplishments of Patek’s watchmaking while branding remained discrete: a small logo adorned a small dial in a small watch that looked like pretty much every other chronograph on the market at the time. We could call that unoriginality, but that’s only if we’re talking about style and not substance. Getting a precision chronograph and a perpetual calendar into a small case was incredibly original, not to mention incredibly difficult, even if the watch itself didn’t scream “I’m a hard-to-get Patek Philippe.”
Of course, from a mechanical perspective, all three of the Holy Trinity companies make incredible and complex timepieces today. It’s not so much that these brands have somehow sold their mechanical souls in exchange for brand equity, but rather that these companies are—like all fashion and accessory companies (and all of us individuals, come to think of it)—caught up in a marketplace where building a brand competes with, and too often supersedes, substantive creation.
Which Brand Is at the Top of the Holy Trinity Today?
The thing about a holy trinity is that there is always someone on top playing god to the son and holy ghost, if you will. And while Patek Philippe may have held that spot during the 1940s and 1950s for its innovation and prolificness, and Audemars Piguet may have taken the top seat now and again via relentless sheen alone, it has long been Vacheron Constantin that has remained not only the oldest of the three (not to mention the oldest continually running watchmaker in the world), but also the more stately and understated of the three brands. Vacheron Constantin has been (I think wisely) slow to embrace celebrity endorsements, to push flashiness over classiness, to make headlines with shocking designs or rude comments about clients. Vacheron has always been more stately, more reserved, and in a way more true to its history than Patek and Audemars Piguet have been.
And so, from a branding perspective, it might be easy to say that Vacheron Constantin remains the holy ghost, the wispy and elusive entity that horological mystics ponder off to the side while the choir sings in the auction hall of the Nautilus and the Royal Oak. And it would be easy to put Audemars Piguet on top of the Holy Trinity today, the lord of watch branding, the conqueror of the American imagination (a mark of greatness for any European enterprise) and of global tastes. Patek Philippe certainly vies for the god-spot, sometimes slots in there when Audemars Piguet isn’t making headlines, especially when Patek’s watches from the ’40s and ’50s break auction records, affirming its prowess, however datedly.
Despite all that, I suggest that Vacheron Constantin may be playing a very long, slow, and laboriously steady game of taking the top spot in the Holy Trinity. I don’t mean that Vacheron Constantin has somehow bowed out of the branding olympics to start a new league based on mechanical superiority (though it probably could do that), but that Vacheron Constantin seems to be executing one of the most clever long-games of modern watch branding, this epitomized by the release of the 222, first in solid yellow gold in 2022 and just this week with the steel version with a blue dial.
How the Vacheron Constantin 222 Historiques Quietly Wins
As we’ve established, the 222 is Vacheron Constantin’s offering of the 1970s, and the watch went out of production for quite some time. Meanwhile the Royal Oak and the Nautilus went on to endless iterations and complications. The Royal Oak became nearly all that Audmars Piguet is known for now, and the Nautilus became so popular that it seemed Patek Philippe was doing all it could to downplay it by cancelling the steel reference 5711 at the watch’s peak popularity in 2021. And while all those variations on a theme were finding their way into the pre-owned marketplace, Vacheron did what pretty much every collector of modern watches I know wishes every brand from Rolex to Patek Philippe would do but never does: recreate the original to a tee.
I held an original 222 and a brand new 222 side by side a few years ago, and it was pretty remarkable to see first-hand how close they were in every way imaginable. If someone said “pick one for yourself” I probably would have chosen the brand new 222, despite being a vintage Vacheron fan; it was so much like the original that I didn’t feel the need for patina and age and would have preferred to have witnesses the emergence of those marks over time. Such a faithful recreation gives a buyer the best of both worlds: all the understated vintage charm of the original and the convenience of owning a brand new watch under warranty and with a clear service history.
Just imagine if Patek Philippe recreated the original Nautilus 3700/1A in stainless steel, exactly. Just imagine if Audemars Piguet recreated the original Royal Oak reference 5402ST in stainless steel, exactly. And while we’re at it, imagine if Rolex put out the original 37mm Submariner reference 6204 of 1954, exactly. There is no question whatsoever that these would be the hottest watches in these brand’s catalogs. Minds would be blown; the internet would break.
And that’s exactly what Vacheron Constantin is doing, and, remarkably, it’s really all they’re doing with the 222. Vacheron Constantin has put out just two versions that are entirely faithful to the originals (barring the use of 2007’s caliber 2455/2, which is a slightly thicker auto-winding movement at 3.6 mm than the original caliber 1120 at 2.45 mm). This strategy may have already—and certainly will eventually—put Vacheron Constantin on top of the Holy Trinity of brands. Admittedly this logic only works if we consider a superior luxury brand to be one that confidently remains true to itself, that doesn’t sway with trends or overreach into the pop culture bucket and risk dilution, that doesn’t stir up controversy and bizarre secondary-market phenomena, that doesn’t milk every opportunity to expand its catalog but instead creates the ultimate expression of an historically significant timepiece in a manner befitting its own legacy. For a brand celebrating its 270th anniversary this year, I think it’s safe to say that Vacheron Constantin is playing the very long game, and I think it’s starting to win.
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