The square peg
By Julien Moreau, Geneva ยท
I have rarely heard a Geneva lunch go so quiet as on the day the Cubitus was announced in 2023. Someone eventually said 'bon', and someone else ordered more wine.
Patek's first new collection in a generation was a square sports watch in steel that borrowed the Nautilus's ears, its horizontally embossed dial and its general air of expensive leisure, and the reaction from collectors was somewhere between bafflement and indignation. Plenty of people decided it was a Nautilus for the waiting list to be steered toward. I am not sure that is fair, but I am not sure it is wrong either.
The specification is curious. Forty-five millimetres square is a large watch, much larger in feel than the number suggests, because a square case puts all of its corners out on the wrist. It is only 8.3 mm thick, which is impressive, with the 26-330 S C inside (45 hours) and an open back. The green dial is pleasant. But 30 m of water resistance on a steel bracelet sports watch is hard to defend, and at thirty-eight to forty thousand dollars it costs more than the Nautilus it obviously wishes to be compared with.
I will say this in its defence. The Royal Oak Offshore was disliked at its launch in 1993 (by Genta himself, it is said), and it became a collector's piece within a decade. The Cubitus may age into something. For now, I would only suggest it to a collector who already has a Nautilus or an Aquanaut and wants the one thing in Patek steel that his friends do not.