The new 2014 collection, the new Patek Philippe booth and the coming 175th Anniversary – lots of news, impressions and pictures to share.
Patek Philippe presented nothing less than 23 new models in Basel, but not all of those are “real” novelties. Some watches are new variants of known references and some watches have been introduced before, even when it happened in a quiet way like with the new dials of Ref. 5270G. The latter have been already available since autumn 2013. The Aquanaut collection is the only one without a new model. Whenever we look at the current Patek Philippe collection we should keep in mind there are already more than 180 references available and quite a lot of them are so called classics.
Before we look at the watches in detail I would like to share something about Patek Philippe´ s new booth for Baselworld. For more than ten years they had used the same booth.
The all-new Patek Philippe exhibition stand, a steel and glass structure that literally radiates the values of the manufacture. The light-flooded pavilion with 1500 m2 on three floors offers 50% more space than the previous stand. The 600 m2 glass façade and 16 external showcases that present the collection stand for the transparency and openness that also characterizes the company's communication philosophy: Welcome to Baselworld 2014!
Especially for visitors of the Baselworld who paid sfr. 60,- (day-ticket) and didn´t have an appointment with Patek Philippe (or others) it is nice to have at least an exhaustive view on the collection and especially the novelties. Bravo to all brands who took care of this!
The 175th Anniversary is coming closer – 1st of May 2014. Even when there will be some activities and communication before autumn, we all will have to wait until October 2014 to see the "celebration” pieces. Good or bad, but for sure it will help to get more attention than during such a big show as Baselworld. Also, who is celebrating his birthday in advance? It´s just not common and the decision were taken like this, anyway. That´s it, for today!
When looking at the novelties at a first view you could get the impression there is lots of “steel” which is quite uncommon for Patek Philippe as they have less than 20% of steel watches in their collections – if we don´t talk about the twenty~4.
So let´s finally have a look to each collection. I will show you all new references (I am aware) and will go more in detail when I spent some hands-on time with the novelty. The latter was only possible for a small selection, because of several (good) reasons and the most challenging one was a 30 minutes (only) appointment to take my own pictures for you.
I will present them by collection and will post them below, step-by-step.