SJX Watches
Hands On: Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept KAWS “Companion”
Launched a few months ago, the Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon “Companion” 43 mm is Audemars Piguet’s first collaboration with Kaws, the contemporary artist best known for work inspired by Mickey Mouse and The Simpsons. While the Kaws edition is not the first AP pop culture collab, it is arguably the best. Initial thoughts I like the Royal Oak Concept Kaws, more than any of AP’s other pop culture collaborations. I like the aesthetic, feel, and execution (though not the oversized case), which put this amongst the best contemporary art crossovers in watchmaking. The Hublot-Murakami series is another outstanding artist-watchmaker collab, but the AP-Kaws watch is executed to a much higher level of quality (and price). Visually, the Kaws is big and bold, but rendered in muted, monochromatic grey – a paradoxical but complementary combination. At a distance the watch seems like yet another oversized Royal Oak, but up close it gets more interesting, starting with the fact that it has no hands in the traditional sense. The lack of hands (which are replaced with peripheral pointers) make this a little more interesting, since the cal. 2979 is a new movement that’s a variant of AP’s more conventional tourbillon calibre. I appreciate the fact that the movement was developed for this watch, both in order to accommodate the figure on the dial and to incorporate the “padded” Kaws aesthetic into the movement bridges on the back. Adding a mechanical complication to the Kaws s...
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