The Current Mania For Ultra-Slim Watches

The current mania for ultra-slim watches is driving a race among watchmakers to capture the title of world's thinnest.

- Nick Foulkes

WATCHMAKERS LOVE A good arms race. The first and perhaps most enduring being the race to equip a timepiece with the maximum number of functions, or complications-a distinction currently held by Vacheron Constantin's breakthrough Reference 57260, released in 2015, which has 57 of them. Then, of course, there's the matter of depth. Among diving watches, Omega trumps all with its 6,000-metre Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep, as covered in this column earlier this year.

Now attention has shifted to thinness. The title of world's thinnest mechanical watch has been held by Piaget's Altiplano Ultimate Concept: The entire watch is just 2 mm thick, achieved with a mixture of new techniques and micron-level-precision component manufacturing, most notably doing away with a baseplate and building the movement straight on the caseback.