Burgundy is the least expected colour in the Code 11.59 line and the one that best demonstrates what the collection's smoked lacquer treatment can do. Blue and grey are colours a dial can carry flat and still look acceptable. Burgundy is not: rendered flat it reads as brown, and it only becomes a red at all when it has depth and a gradient working through it. This reference gets both. The dial is smoked lacquered burgundy over a sunburst base, the case is white gold at 41 mm across and 10.7 mm thick, the inner bezel is black lacquer, and the watch is worn on a hand-stitched burgundy alligator strap in a large square scale. It is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 10.7 mm thick in white gold, which is slim by any measure and wears nothing like the Offshore references Audemars Piguet is better known for, sitting flat against the wrist rather than standing proud of it. The bezel is white gold and matches the case, so the metal runs continuously from the crystal out to the lugs with nothing interrupting it, and that continuity is what allows the dial to be the only thing on the watch doing any work. White gold is also the correct metal for burgundy specifically. A cool metal keeps the colour on the red side of the line, where rose or yellow gold would have warmed it toward brown and undone the distinction the smoking is there to create. The dial is smoked lacquered burgundy over a sunburst pattern base, and the two layers behave differently. A sunburst base throws light outward from the centre so the surface brightens and darkens as the wrist moves; the smoked lacquer over it deepens progressively toward the perimeter, so that motion is contained rather than escaping at the rim. The result is a dial that runs from something close to black at the edge to a clear saturated red at the centre and is never a single colour at any given moment. The applied hour markers and hands are white gold, and they are the only cool elements against the colour. The inner bezel is black lacquer, which gives the darkening edge somewhere to resolve rather than terminating hard against metal. The strap is hand-stitched burgundy alligator in a large square scale, a coarser scale pattern than the fine hide used on traditional dress watches, with a white gold pin buckle. Matching the strap to the dial rather than defaulting to black is what fixes the reference as a single designed object instead of a coloured dial fitted to a standard watch. It also raises the stakes, because a burgundy strap has to hold the same red as the dial or the mismatch is obvious from across a table, and coordinating a dyed hide against a lacquered surface is harder than it sounds. The pin buckle rather than a folding clasp is consistent with the case, since a folding clasp adds height beneath the wrist that a 10.7 mm watch has no use for.
The function set is hours, minutes, centre seconds and a date. There is no chronograph and no further complication, and on a dial of this construction that is a structural requirement rather than a stylistic preference. A smoked gradient depends entirely on running uninterrupted from the centre to the edge, and a running seconds subdial would have punched a hole through the brightest part of it while chronograph counters would have removed the effect altogether. Centre seconds is the only arrangement that shows a running seconds hand without breaking the surface. The date is the one interruption the design permits itself, and it is also the function an owner uses daily, which makes it the right one to keep. What the reference offers in exchange for that reduction is a dial that changes continuously through a day, which is a different kind of engagement from operating a complication and is the one this collection has chosen to pursue.
Within Audemars Piguet's structure Code 11.59 was launched as a third pillar alongside the Royal Oak and the Offshore, and it is the only one of the three not built on an octagonal bezel and an integrated bracelet. That independence made it contentious at introduction and is what makes it interesting now, since it has had to justify itself on the watches rather than on recognition it inherited. The 15210 references within the line are the selfwinding time-and-date models, positioned below the chronographs and the complicated pieces and constituting the collection's most wearable proposition. Development has come almost entirely through dial colour and case metal, running across smoked blue, grey and burgundy in white and rose gold, and comparing a burgundy example against a blue one makes clear that the dial is the product here rather than an option chosen from a list.
This reference is for a collector who wants a colour that most manufacturers will not attempt and wants it in the metal that keeps it honest. Burgundy on white gold with a matching alligator strap is a coordinated watch rather than a neutral one, and the strap commits it further than a rubber-coated alternative would have. The dial also photographs badly, flattening into a single dark red and losing the gradient entirely, so anyone judging the reference from images is judging something considerably less interesting than the object. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and burgundy has always been ordered less often than blue or grey. The buyer is someone who wants an Audemars Piguet that will not be recognised as one immediately and is entirely comfortable with that.
