So ubiquitous is the greatest innovation of the Patek Philippe Calatrava that even students of horology often miss it: The lugs are formed from the same piece of metal as the case rather than welded on. That’s what made this watch utterly modern in 1932 when it brought luxury timekeeping down a notch or two toward the emerging professional upper middle classes of Europe and America. They sold well, putting Patek’s main competitors, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin, on notice. Until then, the only other watch brand that had sorted out how to get the lugs integrated gracefully was Cartier with the Santos and then the Tank—though those were not round watches.
The lugs are not the only reason the Patek Philippe Calatrava holds such an exalted place on this list. The watch is also a study in balanced, harmonious design rendered with a minimalism so exquisitely legible that it’s fair to say that Patek Philippe effectively invented the modern round wrist-worn dress watch (not to mention creating the template for just about every other kind of wristwatch).
Phillips
Initially, the watch wasn’t called the Calatrava, however. That came in the 1980s when Swiss watch brands began to celebrate their histories more overtly. The first watch of this style was just the “reference 96," a watch still coveted today, though our voters also mentioned references 565, 570, 2526, 2552, 3444, and so on. All of these references, however, collapse into a unified watch design now known ubiquitously as the Calatrava. In fact, more than a few sellers of vintage watches today will talk of a Vacheron Constantin Calatrava, an Omega Calatrava, or an Audemars Piguet Calatrava; these designations are dead wrong (and likely an attempt to up SEO on the web), but the generic broadening of the term shows how impactful the watch is to this day. Go up and down this list, and with very few exceptions, the other watches derive their basic form from the Patek Philippe Reference 96 and its younger siblings.
From the article by Allen Farmelo, Paige Reddinger, Victoria Gomelsky, Oren Hartov, Blake Buettner
