Audemars Piguet has announced its latest collaborative watch—this time with Brian Donnelly, the American artist and designer known as KAWS.
Recognised worldwide for his “Companion” figure, the Mickey Mouse-inspired character with x’d-out eyes, KAWS’s cross-market appeal runs from graffiti magazine Skills to Sotheby’s—the later selling a single KAWS painting for USD14.9m in 2019, a new auction record at the time.
Since breaking through in the early 2000s, his appeal has never waned. Fans are as copious as they are cool: Drake, NIGO, Pharrell, Kim Jones, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, the list goes on.
Meanwhile, KAWS has worked with everyone from to Travis Scott to Takashi Murakami, BTS to the Brooklyn Nets, Comme des Garçons to Uniqlo and Nike.
Now comes a collab with Audemars Piguet, a brand no less open to collaborative endeavours, having previously teamed up on projects with the designer Matthew Williams, the golfer Rory McIlroy and the Montreux Jazz Festival.
The Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon “Companion” gives the KAWS trademark character pride of place in the centre of the watch, where he takes up the entire dial.
The time-telling functionality is relocated to the inside ring of the dial—time “literally pushed to the side” says the brand—something that necessitated inventing a new display system.
The hour and minute “hands” (more like markers) rotate around the periphery of the movement and dial, via two visible superimposed gear wheels driven by pinions, and guided by rollers.
Both hands glow blue in the dim light.
The minute hand is skeletonised, to distinguish it from the hour hand. Five-minute graduations, carved into the inner bezel, also glow-in-the-dark.
The watch is made from titanium, measures 43mm and exists in a limited edition of 250 watches.
Price is very much “POA”.
Pretty cool, we think.
