Worn & Wound
A New, Record Breaking, Bulgari Tourbillon
You have to give it up for Piaget. When they introduced the Altiplano Concept Tourbillon last year, they made a hell of a play for the world’s thinnest tourbillon watch. At 2.0mm, that watch was (as most ultra-thin watches are) inconceivably thin. I have to imagine that, when Piaget introduced that watch last year, they felt pretty good about holding onto the record for at least a while but, as these things go, eventually, Bulgari has to have its say in the matter. A year later, we have Bulgari’s seemingly inevitable response: The Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon. At just 1.85mm thick, Bulgari’s latest Ultra-Thin masterpiece represents their 10th world record for thinness in watchmaking and reunites Bulgari with a record it has held on and off since 2014 - which, by way of comparison, was a record they had previously held with watches measuring 5mm and 3.95mm thick. Hard to imagine it, but each of those now seems downright chunky by comparison. There’s a good reason why you often see watches like this held up next to credit cards: Devoid of context, it’s almost impossible for your brain to compute just how little three-dimensional space these watches take up. Bulgari has achieved this stupendously mind-blowing level of thinness by applying the design and construction techniques introduced with the 1.80mm thin Octo Finissimo Ultra and the 1.70mm thin Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC. Most notably, Bulgari has integrated the case and movement of the Octo Finissimo Ultra ...