Watches & Wonders 2021: Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar

The legitimacy of the watchmaking industry is changing. While one cannot ignore the historical legacies of watchmaking brands, in the present time, the days of resting on the laurels of the past, does not establish you in the present, anymore. In this dynamic age of ever changing landscape, it is “now” what people focus on, rather than what was back then.

Back then, Bulgari was a jeweller, a cred that was not taken seriously by the peers and collectors of fine-watchmaking, when they first started. With seven years, nearly 60 international awards and a seventh world record for Bvlgari with the Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar for Bvlgari, the “jeweller” from Via Condotti in Rome, has collectors of haute horlogerie saying Bellissimo!

Octo Finissimo has definitely made its mark on the Haute Horlogerie landscape in a very short space of time. After exploring ultra-miniaturisation in the fields of the automatic movement as well as the minute repeater, chronograph and tour- billon, Bvlgari presents Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar, the slimmest in the world. This new record is available in two variations: the “signature” titanium like all Bvlgari’s World Record, and a platinum version.

A successful exercise: Octo Finissimo has set a trend and reinvented high-flying contemporary watchmaking by bringing it that touch so brilliantly mastered by the Italian House of Bvlgari: L’Estetica della Meccanica, or the art of in-depth innovation with regard to both form and substance. Aesthetics are inseparable from functionality when it comes to reinterpreting a sophisticated classic horological complication in a resolutely contemporary manner.

No less than 408 components interact within the extremely limited space provided by the slender 5.80 mm case of the Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar. The development of the 2.75 mm calibre required the movement design engineers of the Manufacture in Le Sentier to devise new solutions, such as the use of a micro-rotor and the optimal use of the space between the components without reducing their dimensions. Testifying to true genius in the realm of miniaturisation, this development powers the hours and minutes hands along with all the perpetual calendar functions: retrograde-di- splay date, day, month and retrograde-display leap years. They are adjusted by means of three correctors: one for the date at 2 pm, another for the month at 4 pm and a third for the day between 8 and 9 o’clock.

This complication is the most accomplished in this respect and the Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendars offers a talented reinterpretation by merging watchmaking excellence and Italian aesthetic sensitivity. Two versions are available, in titanium or platinum. Their owner will be able to read the time without worrying about having to adjust the indications before February 2100, a leap year that will require the adjustment of the functions by... his or her descendants.

Having made its mark on the turn of the century as one of the most contemporary models, Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar looks even further ahead, already propelling us towards the XXIInd century.