What Piaget is known for

Swiss watch and jewelry house since 1874 — ultra-thin movements and high jewelry. The Polo and Altiplano are icons of understated Swiss luxury.

Georges-Édouard Piaget began in 1874 at the family farmhouse in La Côte-aux-Fées, making movements for other houses — and movements remained the destiny. Piaget's twentieth-century obsession was thinness: the 9P hand-wound calibre of 1957 at two millimeters, the 12P of 1960 as the world's thinnest automatic, records the house still trades and extends with the Altiplano Ultimate Concept, a complete watch barely thicker than a coin.

Ultra-thin movements enabled the house's second identity: watches as jewelry. The 1960s and 70s "Piaget Society" era — hardstone dials in lapis and opal, gold cuff watches, Jackie Kennedy and Andy Warhol as clientele — fused the Geneva jewelry ateliers with the Côte-aux-Fées manufacture. The Polo of 1979 gave the lifestyle its sports watch; today's Polo 79 revival mines that gold-on-gold swagger directly.

Under Richemont, with high jewelry as a full second métier, Piaget remains the maison where the two crafts are one argument: luxury measured in millimeters removed and carats added.