The Piaget Sixtie: When Geometry Becomes Gold
6 min read
The festival of lights arrives with an unusual proposition this year. While most Diwali shoppers scan through catalogs of round-cased classics and safe rectangular dress watches, Piaget has thrown something entirely different into the conversation: a trapezoid strapped to your wrist. The Sixtie, unveiled at Watches and Wonders 2025, doesn't apologize for its geometry. It leans into it.
Diwali 2025 arrives with gold prices at historic highs, but demand for the metal during the festival remains constant. For families who gift gold during Diwali, the form matters as much as the material. The Sixtie offers gold worked to a degree that most traditional jewelry can't match. The case finishing alone requires multiple craftsmen using techniques refined over generations. The bracelet links, with their individual polishing and brushing, represent hours of hand finishing that you'd never get in a cast piece. This level of goldwork matters more during Diwali than it might other times of year. The festival emphasizes not just the presence of gold but its quality, its craftsmanship, its ability to catch and reflect light—literally embodying the festival's core metaphor.
The story begins in 1969, though you wouldn't necessarily know it from looking at the Sixtie today. That year, Piaget debuted what they called the "21st Century Collection" under designer Jean-Claude Gueit, a man who believed watches should cross the line from timekeeper to wearable sculpture. The original pieces from that era—cuffs, sautoirs, and yes, trapezoidal cases—pulled directly from the broader design vocabulary of the late 1960s. Think of Yves Saint Laurent's trapeze dress or the angular ambitions of mid-century architecture. These weren't watches trying to look like architecture; they were architecture scaled down to fit a human wrist. The new Sixtie measures 29mm by 25.3mm and sits at just 6.5mm thick. These dimensions tell you everything about Piaget's approach: this is not a watch that dominates by size but by shape. The case curves at the corners, balances brushed and polished surfaces, and creates what collectors call "asymmetry with intention"—nothing feels accidental.
Gold as Grammar
Piaget doesn't treat gold as decoration. They treat it as their native language. The maison operates two manufactures: one in La Côte-aux-Fées, where movements are born, and another in Plan-les-Ouates on Geneva's edge, dedicated entirely to goldsmithing and jewelry. This second workshop is where the Sixtie's case and bracelet are crafted, and the distinction matters. Most watch brands source their cases from external suppliers. Piaget makes their own, in-house, with jewelers who spend years learning to work gold into forms that feel like fabric. The bracelet on the Sixtie demonstrates this mastery. Interlaced trapeze-shaped links in steel, gold, or two-tone flow into each other with enough fluidity that you forget the case isn't circular. Each link is individually finished—polished, brushed, or a combination—creating what Piaget calls "an interplay of light and textures." The hidden push-button folding clasp maintains visual continuity so nothing interrupts the line from case to clasp.
This approach to goldwork runs through Piaget's entire history. Founded in 1874 in La Côte-aux-Fées, the maison started making watch components for other brands before developing their own pieces. By the time they launched the original trapeze watches in the late 1960s, they had nearly a century of experience manipulating precious metals. The goldsmithing workshop in Plan-les-Ouates transforms raw gold into cases through processes that include polishing, satin-finishing, diamond-finishing, and engraving. Some Piaget bracelets use gold drawn into wire so thin it's woven into mesh that feels like silk against skin. The Sixtie's bracelet doesn't go that far, but it applies the same philosophy: gold should move like it's alive.
The 18k 4N pink gold used in the Sixtie carries a warmth that standard rose gold can't match. Piaget formulates their own gold alloys, adjusting copper and palladium ratios to achieve specific hues. The result is a metal that catches light differently at different angles, shifting from soft blush to deeper copper depending on how you turn your wrist. During Diwali, when gold holds cultural and spiritual significance as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune, this level of attention to the metal itself becomes more than technical—it becomes meaningful.
The Warhol Connection
Andy Warhol wore a Piaget. Not occasionally, but regularly. The model he favored featured gadroon detailing and an unconventional silhouette from that same late-1960s era. The Sixtie explicitly references this, with its own gadroon-inspired dial finish and trapeze case echoing the piece that caught Warhol's attention. This isn't heritage for heritage's sake. Warhol understood that the most interesting objects exist at intersections—art and commerce, high and low, watch and jewelry. The Sixtie lives in that same space.
Piaget released a separate Andy Warhol collection recently, but the Sixtie exists as its own entity, a core collection piece that happens to share DNA with what the artist wore decades ago. The difference matters. The Warhol watches are explicit homages, complete with pop art references and the artist's signature aesthetic. The Sixtie takes the geometry, the audacity, and the jewelry-first philosophy, then builds something for women who want that spirit without the literal references.
Diwali and the Gift That Doesn't Conform
Diwali gifting traditionally emphasizes gold—jewelry, coins, sometimes watches if they carry enough presence. The metal represents wealth, yes, but also new beginnings and the triumph of light over darkness. Most people default to classic gold bangles or necklaces, safe choices that grandmothers and mothers recognize instantly. The Sixtie offers a different entry point. This is a watch that requires its wearer to have a relationship with attention. You don't wear a trapezoid casually. The case geometry ensures that anyone looking at your wrist will notice, will pause, will likely ask about it. For some, that's uncomfortable. For others—particularly women who've spent decades wearing watches that men designed to be inoffensive—it's exactly the point. The Sixtie doesn't apologize for taking up visual space.
The Geometry of Now
Markets saturated with round cases and octagonal revivals create strange gaps. Everyone knows what a Rolex looks like, what an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak telegraphs, what a Cartier Tank means to anyone who sees it on your wrist. The Sixtie exists outside that visual vocabulary. It doesn't reference sports timing or military history or art deco architecture. It references itself, and more broadly, a moment in Piaget's history when the brand believed watches should blur the line between horology and fashion.
That 1969 moment matters because it represents something lost in modern luxury watchmaking: the willingness to prioritize shape over function, jewelry over utility. The original trapeze watches weren't built for diving or timing laps. They were built to make you look twice. The Sixtie resurrects that philosophy for women who've watched the men's watch market get all the interesting designs while women's pieces remained safely feminine, safely round, safely predictable.
For Diwali shoppers considering gold jewelry, the Sixtie presents an alternative to traditional pieces. It's not a bangle, not a necklace, not a ring. It lives on the wrist like those things do, but it serves a different purpose. You can tell time with it, yes, but more importantly, you can signal that you're interested in objects that don't conform to expected shapes. In a festival celebrating light's victory over darkness, there's something appropriate about wearing a piece of gold that refuses to hide in familiar forms.
