Patek's Stylish Perpetual Calendar Trumps Watch Color Hype

This Saturday the first Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711 with “Tiffany blue” dial will go up for auction in New York. No Nautilus has, to date, caused quite as much horological hoo-ha as the new Tiffany limited edition. It will be interesting to see just how much over the £40,000 RRP the piece goes for. Some are suggesting it may hit £1m.

Earlier this year, within weeks of Patek Philippe announcing a green-dial version of its £27,000 Nautilus sports watch, one was flipped at auction (still in its sealed packaging) for £354,000. Such is the watch world in 2021, and such is the kind of irrational hype swirling around certain models.

For a brand that, through its watches, has always projected a message of taste, knowledge and an ability to take the long view (all that “looking after it for the next generation” stuff), the business of the green-dial Nautilus seemed to suggest the game might be changing simply to one of “look what I flex now”.

Luckily, the 5236P “in-line” perpetual calendar is here to remind us that, if you want to send a more nuanced signal to the world, there is still the other 99 percent of the Patek Philippe catalogue to consider, and its accomplished calendar watches in particular.

The brand’s specialism in these stretches back to the 19th century, and today it offers several variations, including both Annual and Perpetual models (the difference lies in being able to account for leap days). By necessity, they can be busy-looking pieces: the underlying mechanics, and the space needed to show the date, day, month, Moon-phase and more, have dictated displays with information spread around what can become a blur of endlessly divided sub-dials.