Blue counters on a blue dial is the same move as black on black and considerably harder to bring off, because blue is a colour and black is an absence. When a chronograph hides its registers in a black field the eye simply finds nothing there; when it hides them in a blue one, the eye keeps looking, and the design only works if the edges of the counters are cut cleanly enough to be read as geometry rather than as smudges. This reference carries it through completely: the dial is lacquered blue, the counters are lacquered blue, and even the inner bezel is lacquered blue, so there is a single colour running from the centre of the watch to the edge of the aperture with nothing interrupting it. The case is rose gold at 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick, and it is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick in rose gold, roughly two millimetres taller than the time-and-date references in the same line, which is the honest cost of a flyback movement rather than a decision about proportion. It is still slim for a precious metal chronograph and sits flat on the wrist where most of the category stands off it. The bezel is rose gold and matches the case, so the metal is continuous from the crystal out to the lugs. The dial is lacquered blue with no smoking and no pattern beneath it, which is a deliberate reduction rather than an absence. The graduated dials elsewhere in the collection are built to move as the wrist turns; this one holds a single flat blue value and does not change, which means every element applied to it has to carry itself on its own finishing. The applied hour markers and hands are rose gold, and the logo is rose gold formed by galvanic growth, a process that grows the metal onto the dial through electrodeposition rather than stamping it or applying it as a separate component. It produces a signature with genuine depth at a scale where a conventional applied part would look coarse and a printed one would be flat, and on a dial with no tonal information anywhere it is one of very few things to look at closely. The lacquered blue inner bezel is the decision that completes the design, since a black ring would have cut the colour off at the perimeter and a blue one lets it run out to the edge. The strap is blue rubber-coated with a rose gold pin buckle, matching the case rather than introducing a second metal. The rubber-coated construction carries the drape of leather over the surface of rubber, which a slim case needs because a stiff strap lifts a thin watch at the lugs and undoes the proportions the design depends on. On a chronograph already carrying extra height that effect compounds. Matching the strap to the dial rather than defaulting to black also keeps the reference in one colour from the inner bezel out to the buckle, which on a watch built entirely around a single lacquer tone is the consistent decision rather than a decorative one.
The function set is a flyback chronograph with hours, minutes, small seconds and a date. A flyback is genuinely more capable than a standard chronograph rather than differently named: a conventional one requires three separate presses to stop, reset and restart between consecutive timing runs, while a flyback does all three from a single press with the chronograph still running. It was developed for timing intervals back to back and remains the faster version to operate. On this dial the complication is present and deliberately quiet, since matched blue counters make the chronograph nearly invisible until it is running. That is a real trade rather than a free one. A collector who wants to read elapsed time at a glance is better served by the smoked references with contrasting registers, and a collector who wants a chronograph that reads as a plain coloured watch until it is used will find very little else that does this.
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. Within the line the 26393 chronographs sit above the 15210 selfwinding models and share their case architecture and dial treatments. This reference belongs to the small group that uses flat lacquer with matched counters and the galvanic logo rather than a smoked gradient, and its immediate sibling is the same construction in black. Between the two, blue is the harder execution and the more interesting result, since black conceals a multitude of finishing decisions that blue exposes.
This reference suits a collector who wants a chronograph that does not look like one and wants it in colour rather than in black. That is narrower than it sounds, because the obvious version of this idea is the black one and choosing blue means accepting that the watch will read as a coloured object first. Rose gold against a flat blue is also a warmer and more assertive pairing than the same dial would be in white gold. The matching rose gold buckle is worth registering, since several rose gold references in this collection pair the case with a white gold buckle and the inconsistency is visible to anyone who looks. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed. The buyer is someone who wants the complication for their own use and would rather it went unnoticed by everyone else.
