This is where Code 11.59 stops being a time-and-date collection and becomes a serious one. The 26393 references carry a flyback chronograph, which is the more capable form of the complication rather than a naming distinction, and putting it in a 41 mm white gold case only 12.6 mm thick is the achievement of the reference. A chronograph movement is inherently tall, and most manufacturers accept fifteen millimetres or more when they build one in precious metal. Under thirteen on a case this size is a genuinely slim chronograph, and it means the watch sits flat rather than standing off the wrist. The dial is smoked blue lacquer over a sunburst pattern with white gold applied markers and a black lacquered inner bezel. It is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick in white gold, which is just under two millimetres taller than the time-and-date references in the same line and is the honest cost of the chronograph rather than a styling decision. Even so it remains slim by the standards of the category. The bezel is white gold and matches the case, so the metal runs continuously from the crystal to the lugs with nothing interrupting it, and white gold does what it usually does here, reading as steel to anyone not handling the watch and declaring itself only through weight. The dial is smoked blue lacquer over a sunburst base, and the two treatments work on separate layers. The sunburst base radiates fine cut lines outward from the centre so the surface brightens and dims along an axis as the wrist turns, and the smoked lacquer over it darkens progressively toward the perimeter, containing that movement instead of letting it run off the edge. The dial is consequently never a single value, reading close to black at the rim and as a clear blue at the centre. Placing a chronograph on that surface is the interesting problem, because the counters have to be legible against a ground that is changing continuously and is at its darkest exactly where the outer scales sit. The applied hour markers and hands are white gold and are the brightest elements present. The inner bezel is black lacquer, giving the darkening perimeter somewhere to resolve. The strap is black rubber-coated with a white gold pin buckle, a construction with the drape of leather and the surface of rubber. That construction matters more on a chronograph than on a time-only reference, because the extra height of the movement already works against the way the case sits and a stiff strap would compound it by lifting the watch at the lugs. A supple strap keeps a 12.6 mm case flat where a rigid one would make it read considerably taller. The pin buckle follows the same reasoning, since a folding clasp adds height beneath the wrist that a watch trying this hard to stay slim has no use for.
The function set is a flyback chronograph with hours, minutes, small seconds and a date. A flyback is a real advance over a standard chronograph rather than a label. On a conventional chronograph, ending one timing run and starting the next requires three separate presses to stop, reset and restart. A flyback does all three from a single press while the chronograph is still running, which is why the function was developed for people timing consecutive intervals and why it remains the faster version to operate. Carrying it in a case this slim is the reference's real claim, since the complication is normally the reason a watch becomes thick. The small seconds and the date complete the display. What the reference asks in return is a busier dial than any other 15210 or 26393 configuration, because a chronograph layout plus a date on a graduated surface is a great deal to hold together, and anyone who came to this collection for the purity of an unbroken smoked dial should be looking at the time-and-date references instead.
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 around an octagonal bezel and an integrated bracelet. Within the line the 26393 chronographs sit above the 15210 selfwinding models in both ambition and price and share their case architecture, dial treatments and strap options, which makes the comparison between them unusually direct. The same smoked blue dial appears on both, and the chronograph version demonstrates what happens when a complication is added to a design that was conceived around an uninterrupted surface. That the reference works at all is the point; that it works while remaining under thirteen millimetres is what distinguishes it.
This reference suits a collector who wants a chronograph that can be worn under a cuff and is prepared to buy it from a collection that has spent years arguing for itself. That is a specific position, since the obvious choice for a precious metal chronograph is a Royal Oak Offshore and the obvious choice for something slim is a time-only watch. This reference refuses both defaults. Smoked blue on white gold is also the most conventional combination the collection offers, which makes it the sensible entry point into the chronographs rather than the interesting one. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and Code 11.59 has never been produced in volumes approaching the Royal Oak. The buyer is someone who wants a working flyback in a watch nobody will identify across a room.
