It’s Real: Say Hello To The New Patek Philippe ‘Cubitus’ (And We Have Thoughts)

The Stern family has been at the helm of Patek Philippe since the 1930s, and for all intents and purposes the family has been responsible for – or, at the very least, overseen – just about every notable iconic release from the brand in the modern wristwatch age. Sure, split-seconds chronographs and the first Patek perpetual calendar wristwatch pre-date the Stern legacy, but when it comes to pure iconography across known collections spanning the Calatrava, the Nautilus, the Ellipse, and the Aquanaut – names that make boutiques quiver at the notion of adding yet another name to a medieval scroll’s worth of a waitlist – we can all thank generations of the Stern family. And now we can add the Patek Philippe Cubitus to that list.

Brothers Jean and Charles Henri Stern invested in Patek in 1932 and were tangentially a part of the brand when the first Calatrava launched. Henri Stern oversaw the development and release of the Ellipse, followed by a watch that has come to define the brand by the general salivating public: the Nautilus (though the ultra-thin Ref. 3940 is just as deserving of praise). Philippe Stern took over in 1993, and it was under his stewardship that Patek followed up on the Gérald Genta-designed Nautilus with a new take on the format: The Aquanaut. Patek loves to delight and surprise, and so, for a deeper look at Patek launches over the years, read Mark Bernardo’s piece here.

You might be thinking to yourself that a whole host of watches are missing from this chronology, and you would be right. What links this birds-eye view of a list together is the fact that each of these launches represent the development of new collections, full stop. Lest we forget, the last time Patek (still under the leadership of Philippe Stern) released a new collection was in 1999, with the ladies Twenty 4 line. It begs waxing horological and taking an initial brief historical look back at Patek because since Thierry Stern stepped into the big chair in 2009, a decade after the Twenty 4, Patek has not released a new collection.

Now, that is no knock on his legacy. A brand like Patek Philippe need not create a new collection. No, seriously, it doesn't need to; it literally doesn't need to. Business is good, and the watches are already the purest form of unobtanium. Remember what big news it was in 2023 when Rolex released the 1908? Need I remind us of the Code 11:59? It isn’t easy for stalwart brands with copious amounts of legacy to just snap their fingers and say, "Here is something you’ve never seen before, uncoupled from the past, and we hope you just … love it."

It has been a quarter-century since a new collection has launched, and even longer since one launched that really sent shockwaves through the industry. So when we got word that Patek Philippe was getting set to launch a fresh line during an event in Munich, Germany, we were naturally intrigued, and perfectly content to wait until the prescribed launch date of October 17. Thierry had dropped nuggets about this launch in various press appearances over the past year or so. This was going to be a feather-in-cap type of launch for him and, by all accounts, was focused on the idea of bringing steel back into the fold, and having a watch priced somewhere between $30,000 - $40,000. (That is attainable by the Patek standard, y’all.)

So we circled October 17th and exercised patience. Well, Fortune Magazine had other plans. Their latest issue hit shelves on Sunday, October 13, and featured an advertisement for a Patek Philippe watch we’d never seen before: the Cubitus. It was square-shaped, had funky lugs with integrated end-links that were of the Nautilus variety, a dial texture also of the Aquanaut variety, and then a dial layout that defied the laws of proportion and simplicity. There was a large dual-window date display, a small running seconds register in the bottom right corner, and a larger aperture with both moon-phase and day display to its left. The internet was ablaze with conjecture. Could this be real? Was this a publicity stunt ahead of the launch? Would it be a “gotcha” moment, a joke by Thierry Stern (something not out of the realm of possibility mind you)? Well, as I told my colleague Bilal Khan when this all happened, the watch world isn’t that big. And a joke like that simply wouldn’t have the payoff. Which brings us to today, October 17, 2024, launch day. And today, we can confirm that the Cubitus is very real. 

And while the watch we saw in the advertisement was also real, it was not the only iteration of the Cubitus line that  launched today. That notion of a $40k watch exists in the steel version with a simple time and date format. So let’s jump into the particulars of the Patek Philippe Cubitus here.

The case measures 44.5mm x 44.9mm and 8.3mm thick. Those endlinks appear to be integrated into the case much like what you find on a modern Rolex Daytona, strap version. The dial looks to be almost identical to what we find on the Nautilus. For those hoping to get a steel Nautilus, I am sorry to say that Santa brought you a Cubitus instead. The handset and the markers both take design cues directly from the Nautilus as well. And while the complicated, precious-metal variant we saw in the Fortune advertisement features the Patek Philippe logo at three o’clock, the time-and-date version forgoes a small seconds subdial in favor of a central seconds, which then movies the logo to 12 o’clock and a more straightforward date aperture to 3 o’clock – again, à la the Nautilus. But of course, in this iteration we get a green dial as opposed to a blue dial, reminiscent of the olive-green Nautilus 5711 from 2021. Rounding things out is a bi-color (with pink gold) model with a pink-gold bezel and a blue dial.

The Fortune model — which has a case made of platinum — appears to be the only one with complications. The movements are both in-house automatics: Caliber 26-330 SC in the simpler models, the ultra-thin Caliber 240 PS CI J LU in the more complicated model. Prices of the Patek Philippe Cubitus range from $41,240 for the steel model with green dial, to $61,280 for the two-tone with blue dial, to $88,380 for the platinum watch with grande date, day and moon-phases.

Just by writing this story, it starts to make sense to me. The Cubitus is almost literally a square Nautilus, a Squaretilus, a… Cubitus! It’s essentially a watch making manifest what a brand needs to do to curb demand, while also remaining fresh by way of a new product launch. Demand for the Nautilus remains at an all-time high, especially in the aftermath of the 5711’s discontinuation. There is no steel Nautilus. We thought one would come back, and maybe it will one day. But Thierry Stern must be looking at the broader landscape of the product assortment and seeing that there is a slight issue. The truth is, in order to even get close to buying a steel Patek sports watch — which today is an Aquanaut — you must have some real purchasing juice behind you. You must have bought some platinum complications along the way which takes what would be a sub $30,000 watch purchase and makes it a six-figure endeavor. This is to say nothing of the secondary market.

So to balance things out (you know, like the Force), Thierry and co. have crafted the Patek Philippe Cubitus, a watch that may take a serious Jedi mind trick to make many collectors really want it. Though, I am sure a lot of folks out there are going to quickly jump on this bandwagon, betting that a Cubitus purchase confers the same goodwill necessary to nab that future steel Nautilus.

Am I going to jump on the current watch media bandwagon and rail against the Cubitus? Absolutely not. Watches are entirely subjective. A wise colleague once told me that there is a client for every watch, and I have no doubt that there are going to be thousands upon thousands of clients for the Cubitus. We very rarely appreciate a watch in its time, especially one that disrupts our own accepted group-think. This watch isn’t round, this watch isn’t vintage inspired, and this watch almost feels like an April Fool’s joke. Twin Peaks was canceled after two seasons because the mainstream audience didn’t get it, and failed to deliver the show the ratings it deserved. The Cubitus strikes me as Patek’s version of Twin Peaks: The Return, the Showtime revival that turned all notions of the show on its head and probably won't be fully appreciated for another two decades (I suppose that makes the Aquanaut Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but I digress).

You are going to see a monsoon’s worth of opinions of the Cubitus in the coming months. Heck, they have already been out there since the Fortune leak. At the end of the day, a Patek watch is no more obtainable than it was yesterday. The Cubitus will be as hard to come by as a Nautilus, and the onus is on you to decide whether you like it or you don’t. I support you either way. You can learn more about the Cubitus at patek.com