Purple is the colour the Code 11.59 line uses least, and on a rose gold case it produces the most unexpected watch in the group. The dial is smoked lacquered purple over a sunburst pattern, which means the colour is not a flat field but a gradient running from something close to black at the perimeter to a clear saturated purple at the centre, shifting continuously as the wrist turns. Purple flat is difficult and usually unsuccessful; purple with depth behind it is a different proposition entirely. Set against rose gold applied markers and hands, and framed by a black lacquered inner bezel, it is a combination the wider industry almost never attempts. The case is rose gold at 41 mm across and 10.7 mm thick, and it is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 10.7 mm thick in rose gold, slim enough to sit flat on the wrist and pass under a cuff, which is the property that most separates this collection from the Offshore references the house is better known for. The bezel is rose gold and matches the case, so the metal runs continuously from the crystal out to the lugs with nothing breaking it. Rose gold against purple is a warm metal against a cool colour, and the two are working in opposition rather than agreement, which is what gives the watch its tension. A white gold case would have let the purple sit quietly; rose gold does not, and the dial reads warmer at the centre as a result. The dial is smoked lacquered purple over a sunburst base, and the two treatments operate on separate layers. The sunburst base is cut so that fine lines radiate from the centre, and lacquer over it stays translucent enough for those lines to catch light in sequence as the watch moves. The smoking then darkens the lacquer progressively toward the rim, containing that movement rather than letting it escape at the edge. The dial is therefore never one value at any moment. The applied hour markers and hands are rose gold, the only metal on the dial. The inner bezel is black lacquer, which gives the darkening perimeter somewhere to resolve rather than stopping hard against the case. The strap is black rubber with a rose gold pin buckle, and it is worth noting that this is plain rubber rather than the rubber-coated construction used on several references in the line. That distinction is not trivial. A rubber-coated strap is built to drape like leather while surviving like rubber, and it exists to protect the proportions of a slim case. Plain rubber is stiffer and more overtly sporting, and on a purple dial in rose gold it pushes the watch further from the dress register than any other configuration in the line manages. Whether that suits the reference is a matter of taste, but it is a different watch on the wrist from the rubber-coated versions and should not be assumed equivalent to them.
The function set is hours, minutes, centre seconds and a date. There is no chronograph and no further complication, and on a dial built around a gradient that reduction is structural rather than a stylistic preference. A smoked sunburst depends on running uninterrupted from centre to edge, so a running seconds subdial would have cut through the brightest region of it and introduced a second focal point competing with the first. Centre seconds keeps every hand turning about a single axis, which is the only arrangement the pattern tolerates. The date is the one interruption the design accepts, and it is the function an owner engages with day to day, so it is the correct thing to keep. What the reference offers instead of anything to operate is a dial that behaves differently at every hour, which is the proposition this collection has chosen to make throughout.
Within Audemars Piguet's structure Code 11.59 was launched as a third pillar alongside the Royal Oak and the Royal Oak Offshore, and it is the only one of the three not built around an octagonal bezel and an integrated bracelet. That independence made it divisive at introduction and is what makes it interesting now, because it has had to earn its position on the watches rather than on recognition it inherited. Within the line the 15210 references are the selfwinding time-and-date models, the collection's most wearable group, developed almost entirely through dial colour, case metal and strap. The established colours are blue, grey and burgundy, all of which have been produced across white and rose gold. Purple sits outside that range entirely and is the only one of the group that could not be described as a conventional dial colour for a watch of this kind.
This reference suits a collector who wants a colour nobody else is wearing and wants it executed properly rather than as a novelty. Purple fails in most applications because it is usually applied flat, and the smoked sunburst construction is precisely what rescues it here. Rose gold pushes it further still, since the warm case refuses to let the colour settle into something safe. The plain rubber strap keeps the whole thing from becoming precious, which on a purple dial in rose gold is a necessary correction. The dial also photographs badly, flattening into a single dark plum and losing the gradient entirely, so anyone judging it from images is judging a duller object. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and unusual colours are ordered in smaller numbers than the established ones and become hard to find first. The buyer is someone who is entirely uninterested in playing safe with a dial colour.
