Sometimes, a watch just needs to get made to be an unqualified success but this is not the case with Ref. 5738/1R-001. Although a staple at Patek Philippe, the watch earned its place in the collection without the benefit of any sort of trend. Indeed, the original Golden Ellipse and all subsequent editions with bracelets had a bit of a wearability issue. The bracelet was a pure piece of jewellery, like a bangle, and could not be easily resized. This necessarily limited the potential of the watch, and made the leather strap option inevitable. The Golden Ellipse is a total design watch though and the nature of the bracelet is key.

This year, Patek Philippe has resolved this fit-and-feel issue with a brand new bracelet that can now be resized. When we heard about this, one the first day of the fair, we did not know how to feel about it. No exhibition caseback, no change to the movement…just a new bracelet; pretty ho-hum. Not so. The bracelet is an amazing bit artisanal craftsmanship and might even provoke the envy of Nautilus owners.

That is how good this bracelet is, and yes that is a reference to the presence of screwed links here. But this bracelet does not have individual solid pieces, as the aforementioned Nautilus bracelet. Instead, it has more than 360 pieces and is assembled painstakingly by hand. This is what gives this new bracelet its flexibility, in terms of easily accommodating a number of different wrist sizes.

In terms of other factors, the watch specifications are very much the same as all other sorts of Golden Ellipse watches. This means there is a solid caseback that obscures the self-winding calibre 240 (which is blessed by the Patek Philippe seal) and that water-resistance is dress-watch standard 30m. Other standard features include the slender cheveu hands, gold dial plate and baton-style applique hour markers. Only the CHF price is known and that works out to be CHF51,000.

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