Burgundy on a chronograph dial is a considerably harder proposition than burgundy on a plain one, and this reference is where Code 11.59 attempts it. The colour only works with depth behind it, since burgundy rendered flat reads as brown, and the smoked lacquer over a sunburst base is what keeps it a red. A chronograph then places counters and scales onto that same graduated surface, so the layout has to remain legible against a ground that is darkest precisely where the outer markings sit. The case is white gold at 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick, the inner bezel is black lacquer, and the watch is worn on hand-stitched burgundy alligator. It is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick in white gold, roughly two millimetres taller than the time-and-date references in the same line, which is the honest consequence of a chronograph movement rather than a decision about proportion. Under thirteen millimetres on a 41 mm precious metal chronograph is still genuinely slim, and the watch sits flat on the wrist where most chronographs of this kind stand off it. The bezel is white gold and matches the case, so the metal runs unbroken from the crystal to the lugs. White gold is also the correct metal for burgundy specifically, since a cool case holds the colour on the red side of the line where a warm one would push it toward brown and undo the distinction the smoking exists to create. The dial is smoked burgundy lacquer over a sunburst pattern. The sunburst base is cut with fine lines radiating from the centre so the surface brightens and dims along an axis as the wrist moves, and the smoked lacquer over it deepens progressively toward the rim so that movement is contained rather than escaping at the edge. The result runs from near-black at the perimeter to a clear saturated red at the centre. The applied hour markers and hands are white gold, the only cool elements against the colour and the brightest things on the dial. The inner bezel is black lacquer, giving the darkening edge somewhere to resolve rather than terminating hard against metal. The strap is hand-stitched burgundy alligator in a large square scale, coarser than the fine hide used on traditional dress watches, with a white gold pin buckle. The pin buckle rather than a folding clasp is consistent with the case, since a folding clasp adds height beneath the wrist and this reference has spent its entire engineering budget keeping height off the top of it. On a chronograph that reasoning carries further than it does on a time-only watch, because the movement is already the tallest thing in the collection and every millimetre elsewhere is worth protecting. Hand-stitching on the strap is the other detail that separates this configuration from the rubber-coated versions, and it is visible from any distance.
The function set is a flyback chronograph with hours, minutes, small seconds and a date. A flyback is a genuine step above a standard chronograph rather than a marketing term: a conventional one requires three separate presses to stop, reset and restart between consecutive timing runs, while a flyback resets and restarts from a single press with the chronograph still running. It was developed for timing intervals back to back and remains the faster version to use. Putting it in a case this slim is the reference's real claim, since a chronograph is normally what makes a watch thick. The small seconds and the date complete the display, and together they make this the busiest dial in the collection. That is the trade. Anyone drawn to Code 11.59 for the uninterrupted smoked surface should be looking at the 15210 references, because a chronograph necessarily breaks it.
Within Audemars Piguet's structure Code 11.59 was introduced as a third pillar alongside the Royal Oak and the Offshore and 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 and share their case architecture, dial treatments and strap options, which makes the comparison between them unusually direct. The same smoked burgundy dial and matching alligator strap appear on the time-and-date reference, so the pair isolates exactly what the flyback adds in height, in dial complexity and in scarcity. Burgundy has always been ordered less often than blue or grey across both.
This reference is for a collector who wants a chronograph in a colour most manufacturers will not attempt, and who wants it slim enough to disappear under a sleeve. That is a narrow brief and this reference is one of very few answers to it. The matched burgundy alligator commits the watch further than a black strap would have, making it a coordinated object rather than a dial fitted to a standard watch, and it raises the stakes correspondingly since a dyed hide has to hold the same red as a lacquered surface. The dial photographs poorly either way, collapsing into a single dark red and losing the gradient, so images consistently undersell it. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed. The buyer is someone who wants the complication and the colour and is willing to accept the busiest dial in the collection to get both.
