The Piaget Polo 79, unveiled Feb. 5, may be new, but it looks an awful lot like one of the watch brand’s most recognizable models: the Polo, first released in 1979.
“We had a huge history during the ’70s about creativity,” said Rémi Jomard, Piaget’s director of products and innovation, who added that the best pieces come from “when you dig in the past.”
Like its predecessor, the Polo 79 displays a combination of brushed matte gold bars and gadroons, thin curved pieces of gold that, in this design, are polished and shiny, a mix that appears on the watch dial as well as its integrated bracelet. According to Piaget, that look — luxurious but casual, neither feminine or masculine — contributed to the original Polo’s success.
The design “offered a very strong aesthetic identity,” said Alain Borgeaud, the brand’s director of patrimony. “I think that’s the reason it became such an icon.”
The Polo 79, however, is not an exact duplicate. It has a 38-millimeter dial, larger than the original’s range of 34 to 20 millimeters, is water-resistant, unlike the original, and it has a round dial — the original Polo came in both round and square options. While the original models — produced, Mr. Borgeaud said, until the end of the 1980s — were primarily powered by quartz movements, the Polo 79 is automatic, powered with the 1200P1 proprietary movement that Piaget introduced in 2010.
