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THE GREAT<br />
INNOVATOR — THE<br />
INCREDIBLE SIX-<br />
YEAR HISTORY OF<br />
BVLGARI’S ICONIC<br />
OCTO FINISSIMO<br />
Under the leadership of CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, Bvlgari<br />
has turned its multiple-award-winning Octo Finissimo line<br />
into a veritable icon of 21st-century watchmaking. In 2020,<br />
the Italian luxury house presents two new Finissmo models,<br />
and a special luminous edition made for Revolution.<br />
WORDS WEI KOH<br />
Sometimes, it takes the world a moment to fully understand genius. This<br />
was clearly the case during the first Impressionist exhibition when, upon<br />
viewing Monet’s now iconic Impression, Sunrise, the humorist, critic<br />
and clearly something of a moron, Louis Leroy, scathingly and derisively wrote,<br />
“Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” History,<br />
of course, being the greatest judge, holds Monet in awed reverence while Leroy’s<br />
name has faded into an anonymity that is most analogous to the “unfinished<br />
wallpaper” he once so unwittingly compared Monet’s painting to.<br />
While the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo was instantly recognized by those of us who<br />
understood its deliciously brazen departure from the banal, formulaic repetition<br />
of yearly watch novelties whose mantra was “new dial/strap/hands but no<br />
change”, it took the rest of the world a few years to fully comprehend that this was<br />
more than a daring design, but a statement of in-house competences — in dial<br />
making, case making, movement making and bracelet making — so brilliantly and<br />
synergistically linked that to me, it is the single greatest watchmaking achievement<br />
in the last decade of modern horology. Further, the Octo Finissimo’s story not<br />
only in terms of record-setting technical achievement, but also its rise as a<br />
contemporary icon to truly rival the entrenched integrated bracelet, sports chic<br />
watches — Patek Philippe’s Nautilus and Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak — is a<br />
statement of the inspired leadership of the true innovator that is Bvlgari’s CEO<br />
Jean-Christophe Babin. Babin, over his tenure as the CEO of the famed Roman<br />
jeweler, has innovated not just at the product level, not just at the brand level, not<br />
just at the communication level, but also at the exhibition level by staging, along<br />
with his sister brands Hublot and Zenith, the first-ever LVMH Group watch fair<br />
held in Dubai this January.<br />
The Octo Finissimo<br />
has, since its first<br />
emergence in<br />
2014, stunned the<br />
world repeatedly<br />
with its muscular<br />
architecture and<br />
refined elegance.<br />
Its latest release<br />
in satin-polished<br />
steel makes it<br />
one of the most<br />
covetable sports<br />
chic watches today.<br />
Midnight blue<br />
barathea wool<br />
with black silk<br />
facings, The Deck.<br />
26 COVER STORY
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