10 years ago, Bulgari started making thin watches. Not just thin watches, but almost impossibly thin watches. It was easy to think this was a one-off exercise, and to leave it well enough alone. Instead, they’re doing it again. This is a watch so thin, it may as well be made of paper.
Bulgari has set world records for thin watches in the past. The last world record holder for a thin watch was the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept, from 2018. That watch was an absurd 2mm.
This Octo Finissimo manages to reduce height to a mere 1.8mm. It’s an amazing accomplishment, and every part of the design contributes to it.
The movement layout, the thin-ness of the parts, the titanium case that holds it, and unlike the Piaget before it, there’s no crown or stem to set it, it has an exposed set of gear teeth where a crown should be.
The case is the main plate. Rather than a separate movement that’s inserted into a case, the titanium caseback is the plate that the movement is built into. It’s made out of tungsten carbide steel, a very hard, light, and brittle material.
Amazingly, the watch has 50 hours of power reserve. There’s a gear on the left that winds it. For all this, the movement runs at 4hz, or 28800 beats per hour.
There are only going to be 10 of these in the world, which is 9 more than you might expect. But don’t worry, if you can’t manage to buy one, you can pay for the NFT, which is linked from a QR code etched into the mainspring barrel. Bulgari.com
