This year, Bvlgari makes its debut at Watches and Wonders Geneva. For its foray at the horological trade show, Bvlgari makes quite the impression by serving up a good helping of "the world's thinnest tourbillon watch. Ever. (For now.)"; this is the impossible watch, the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon.
But "impossible" isn't a word found in Bvlgari's dictionary. In 2014, the brand's Octo FInissimo Tourbillon was the thinnest flying tourbillon movement and watch at 1.95-mm thick. There were some challengers to the boast but eventually, the pendulum swung towards Bvlgari's court (remember Richard Mille and Piaget?). A decade, several broken records and more than 60 international awards later, Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon is now set at 1.85mm.
Miniaturising something isn't as simple as a click of a mouse button, especially for watches. You'd need to shrink the other components, which means constructing new smaller pieces from scratch. It's a do-over. From the R&D, Bvlgari worked with mechanical movement maestro, Concepto, and came up with eight specific patents that covered a differential display; an integrated case middle and plate design; a bi-material case back; a new crystal mounting method; a novel barrel structure; the oscillator module; the modular construction, and the bracelet design.
The bezel, case middle and lugs are crafted from microbead-frosted titanium; the main plate is made from tungsten carbide. The ratchet and two planar "crowns" are fashioned from circular-grained stainless steel. At the centre of its tiny beating heart is the hand-wound BVF 900 tourbillon calibre with a frequency of 4Hz. You have an integrated titanium bracelet that measures 1.5mm thick (folding clasp included).
Even knowing how it was put together, it still seems like sorcery. The spaces between the case, the movement, and the caseback leaves no room for error (or anything else for the matter). Can a watch be any thinner? The Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon feels like the endgame but we didn't think this is the last record we'll see from the Italian brand.
Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon is limited to 20 pieces and retails for USD678,000
