Thanks
BIONONE for the vote of confidence. Of course the Frankfurt AP boutique knows nothing of my involvement with their watches nor do I want them to: I am just another name on their mailing list that perhaps might one day buy a watch from them, a shot in the dark which they invite for champagne aperitifs to ogle their new frosted gold finishing techniques, or their new Code 11.59 catastrophe. I must say: I am increasingly feeling like an outsider in AP circles and I am trying to understand why that is because I used to like AP as my favorite brand up until 2014 or so. Unfortunately, it is also happening with Panerai as well for me: I actually dislike most everything that Panerai is releasing these days. What new releases inspire me? Ressence for high tech innovation, Rexhep Rexhepi for classic beauty, Linde Werdelin for the ornate luxury sports designs, FP Journe for audacious and sovereign watchmaking ... even Hermes for fashion elegance. Placed against those competitors, AP has fallen by the wayside, for me, in ALL categories: AP has become an arrogant fashion watch monstrosity which absolutely needs the viral Instagram overexposure and expensive brand ambassadors and payrolled bloggers (pace Hodinkee) in the lumbering and wasteful AP marketing/illusion machine to sell these poor designs to new money watch fashionistas. I will not say AP is the new Hublot, but it is like a horological pendant to the champagne industry: AP is the new Veuve Cliquot. Veuve Cliquot makes a mediocre biscuity/lemony champagne and needs to promote it through golf and tennis tournaments and expensive sommelier junkets, driving up the price for the normal consumer, who receives in return just an average champagne, while financing through each purchase those 8 course dinners in the castle in Rheims for the league of Michelin star restaurant beverage managers, etc. Look at the Bennahmias blonde trophy wife, look at the Bennhamias yacht in St. Tropez, listen to his arrogant interviews, register his claims to being on the pulse of the times with his surreally pretentious ad campaign for Code 11.59 with has-been basketball stars doing rap songs that herald the AP brand innovation and crazily choreographed cyborg dance troupes a la Super Bowl half time shows dancing to the beat of AP's daring. It is a frankly insane and desperately glitzy and superficial cover up trying to mask the fact that the actual watches AP are designing and selling for mega bucks these days are really not so good and a travesty towards their tradition and founder families.