A purple chronograph is not something the watch industry produces, and this is the only one Audemars Piguet has put in this collection. The dial is smoked lacquered purple over a sunray pattern base, and the reference is worn on a matching purple alligator strap, which commits it further than any neutral pairing would. Purple fails in most applications because it is applied flat and reads as either plastic or funereal; smoked over a cut base it becomes a colour with depth, running from near-black at the perimeter to a clear saturated purple at the centre. Placing chronograph counters on that surface is the difficult part, since the registers sit in the region a smoked dial makes darkest. The case is rose gold at 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick. It is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 41 mm across and 12.6 mm thick in rose gold, about two millimetres taller than the time-and-date references in the line, which is the honest consequence of a flyback movement rather than a styling decision. It remains slim for a precious metal chronograph and sits flat against the wrist. Rose gold against purple is a warm metal against a cool colour, and the two work in opposition rather than agreement, which is what gives the watch its tension. A white gold case would have let the purple settle quietly; rose gold refuses to, and the dial reads warmer toward the centre as a result. The dial is smoked lacquered purple over a sunray pattern base. A sunray base carries finer and more closely spaced radiating lines than a sunburst, so the light it throws sweeps gradually across the surface rather than flaring along one hard axis, and on a dial that also has to carry counters and a date that gentleness is what keeps the layout readable. The smoking then darkens the lacquer progressively toward the rim, containing the movement of light instead of letting it escape at the edge. The applied hour markers and hands are rose gold, the only metal on the dial and the brightest things on it. The inner bezel is black lacquer, giving the darkening perimeter somewhere to resolve rather than stopping hard against the case. The strap is hand-stitched purple alligator in a large square scale, coarser than the fine hide used on traditional dress watches, with a rose gold pin buckle matching the case. That the buckle is rose gold rather than white 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 notices it. Here the case, the markers, the hands and the buckle are all one metal. The pin buckle rather than a folding clasp is consistent with the case as well, adding no height beneath the wrist where a folding clasp would, which matters on a watch already carrying the extra millimetres a chronograph movement demands.
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: a conventional one needs three separate presses to stop, reset and restart between consecutive runs, while a flyback resets and restarts from a single press with the chronograph still running. It was developed for people timing intervals back to back and remains the quicker version to use. Fitting it into a case this slim is the reference's real claim, since the complication is normally what makes a watch thick. The small seconds, the counters and the date make this a dense display, and on a smoked purple ground that density is working against the colour rather than with it. Anyone who came to this collection for an uninterrupted smoked surface should be looking at the 15210 references, where nothing breaks the dial.
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. The established colours across both groups are blue, grey and burgundy, all produced in white and rose gold. Purple sits outside that range entirely, appearing once on a 15210 and once here, and it is the only colour in the collection that could not be described as conventional for a watch of this kind.
This reference is for a collector who wants a colour nobody else is wearing and wants a working complication underneath it. That combination eliminates almost the entire market, since buyers who want an unusual dial generally accept a simple watch and buyers who want a flyback generally accept a conventional colour. The matched purple alligator is what makes it a coordinated object rather than an odd dial in a standard watch, and it raises the stakes considerably, because a dyed hide has to hold the same purple as a lacquered surface that is itself changing across the dial. The dial photographs badly, collapsing into a flat plum and losing the gradient entirely. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and unusual colours are ordered in smaller numbers and disappear first. The buyer is someone with no interest at all in playing safe.
