Only seeing watches in person can suffice when it comes to meaningfully judging them. So, we recently visited the folks at Piaget to spend some extended time with the current watch collection, which dazzled us far beyond our expectations. From amazing ultra-thins, to watches fully paved in diamonds, to the tasteful solid-gold 35 mm time-only Altiplano, today’s Piaget watch collection challenges horological norms, just as it has since Piaget began producing its avant-garde, design-forward timepieces in the 1950s.
 
Over the past couple of years, we have documented the recent turn away from tool watches toward dress watches. We’ve noticed dress watches themselves shrinking, sometimes to proportions that—like the Cartier’s new Tank Mini—can illicit a giggle from behind a man’s well-oiled beard. However, men and broaches are now having a little moment, as are men and initial-pendant necklaces, and together all of this may explain why the daring, design-forward watches from Piaget—vintage and new—are also having a moment.

This softening of style and embracing of bodily luxury hasn’t done away with our manly love of the fastest, loudest cars and motorcycles, dangerous deep-sea adventures, safaris, and all the other Hemingway-esque stuff that folks who took Feminism 101 freshman year sometimes suggest might be deployed as compensation for a lack of stature in an area Freud indicated might otherwise cause envy. But look, our masculinity—OK, our gender—is complex, perhaps more now than ever before, and Piaget watches seem to speak to that complexity.

I’ve been known to douse myself in Chanel Blue before hopping onto my 175 hp BMW S1000R so that I can catch a bit of sweet, romantic Paris up in my otherwise not-great-smelling helmet while doubling the speed limit. I’ve seen uncouth straight men rubbernecking as a gorgeous woman passes by, all the while fidgeting with some 31.5 mm vintage gold watch on a mesh bracelet, or puffing on a lime-green anodised e-cigarette emitting a tropical fruit scent that elicits from my middle-aged memory the Kool-Aid Man crashing through the nearest wall. Men are complicated, and for some of us the surfacing of that complication in today’s fast-changing watch fashion is a good thing. It affords us a bit of freedom to explore our identities.

The good news is that you don’t have to sell your jacked-up Ford F350 to enjoy a bit of razzle-dazzle on your wrist, and in fact it may be that such a juxtaposition is what’s chic right now. And the fast lane to insanely cool, high-quality, mechanically sophisticated, ultra-tasty wrist dazzlers is none other than the modern Piaget watch collection. Mashing these dazzling watches up with everyday fashions is becoming increasingly hip.

As my esteemed colleague, Paige Reddinger, wrote of the reissued Piaget Polo in April of this year: “Its release has aligned with the style zeitgeist, with ‘mob aesthetic’—think luxe track suits and fur coats—trending and flashy dress watches, the kind once worn with macho suiting and a heavy dose of cologne, now seen on guys more apt to pair them with a T-shirt and APC jeans.” James Lamdin, founder and operator of Analog:Shift, recently walked us through an incredible vintage Piaget selection and told Robb Report, “I didn’t expect for men to embrace it the way [they have].”
 
We were also recently blown away when visiting with Manhattan-based watch dealer Gai Gohari, who showed us what is likely the largest vintage Piaget collection in North America, if not the world. Gohari was scooping up vintage Piaget in Italy years ago, well ahead of the curve, and found great value there. Gohari told us, “I mean, you have a super funky watch: gold, mechanical, all in-house, made from A to Z with a stone dial, totally unique, for like, at the time, US$2,000 to US$2,500 (HK$15,595 to HK$19,490).”

But vintage isn’t for everyone, with its inherent risks. And vintage Piaget—being less known and wildly varied compared to, say, vintage Rolex or Omega, which adhered to the regularity of industrial production—is particularly hard to get to know (though we’ve made strides in understanding vintage Piaget watches better lately).

During our appointment at the Manhattan Piaget boutique at Hudson Yards last week, we were able to feel out what the modern Piaget collection has to offer. What we found was just as mind-blowing as the vintage Piaget collections we’ve seen, but with ramped-up complications of the highest order, exceptional modern sport models in the Polo line, and of course the bejewelled dazzlers that are, suddenly, seeming more “unisex” than ever before.

If there was a stand-out watch, it was unexpectedly the simplest: a 35 mm time-only watch in rose gold with a red alligator strap. This watch represents one of the very few truly vintage-sized dress watches currently available on the market today, and in so doing it seems that Piaget is, once again, ahead of the trend—or is setting it, perhaps. At around US$20,000 (HK$155,940), you’re paying quite a bit for this Altiplano, but this is a watch we’d put up against a Lange Saxonia Thin or even the modern Patek Calatrava, both of which come in at 37 mm—which really does feel large for a dress watch with a narrow bezel.

Overall, wearing these modern Piaget watches felt like a journey into an entirely unique corner of today’s Swiss watchmaking, a corner that is filled with unabashed luxury, complication, design, jewel-setting, and—for lack of a better word—imagination. As we continue to explore Piaget’s wonderful watches, this time spent with the Piaget collection has confirmed that no other brand has done so well what Piaget continues to do: dazzle.