White on white is the most demanding way to present a set tourbillon, and this is the reference that does it. The openworked white gold dial is set with brilliant-cut diamonds, the white gold inner bezel is set with them as well, the hands are openworked white gold, the clasp is set with diamonds, and the strap is white alligator. There is no contrasting element anywhere on the watch, which means every distinction the eye makes has to come from texture, depth and the mechanism visible underneath rather than from colour. Most set watches use a dark dial or a dark strap somewhere to give the stones a ground to work against. This one refuses that entirely. The case is white gold, 38.5 mm across and 11.4 mm thick, and it is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 38.5 mm across and 11.4 mm thick in white gold, remarkably slim for a tourbillon and the reason the reference is wearable rather than ceremonial. White gold is the only metal that would have permitted the monochrome approach, since it matches the diamonds in colour temperature and lets the case, dial, bezel and hands read as one material throughout. The dial is openworked white gold set with brilliant-cut diamonds, and openworking a dial that is also being set is a compounding difficulty rather than two separate ones: each aperture cut for the mechanism removes metal a stone could have occupied, so the setting has to be laid out around the openwork with the movement dictating what positions remain. The inner bezel is white gold set with brilliant-cut diamonds, which carries the setting to the edge of the dial and closes the composition without introducing a border in another colour. The hands are openworked white gold, skeletonised so they cross the mechanism rather than covering it, and on an all-white watch that skeletonising is what keeps them findable, since solid hands would have merged into the field behind them. The strap is hand-stitched white alligator in a large square scale, coarser than dress-watch hide and matched to the Royal Oak case, with a white gold folding clasp set with brilliant-cut diamonds. A white constellation-textured rubber strap is supplied as well. Supplying a second strap in the same white rather than in a contrasting colour is consistent with everything else here, and it is also the more useful choice. A dark alternative would have solved the maintenance problem by abandoning the design; matching it in rubber solves it while keeping the watch intact, since rubber tolerates handling that alligator does not. The constellation texture gives the second strap a surface of its own so the two are distinguishable by feel and finish rather than by colour, which is the only axis this reference has left itself.
The movement carries a flying tourbillon and a power reserve display, with hours and minutes. A flying tourbillon has no upper bridge over the rotating carriage and is supported from below, so the assembly turns apparently unsupported and remains visible from the front, which is why it is paired with an openworked dial here. The openwork exists to show the tourbillon and the tourbillon is built flying so that what is shown is uninterrupted. The power reserve display is the practical complication and reports how much running time remains before the watch stops, which carries more weight on a tourbillon than on an ordinary watch because a movement of this kind that runs down must be restarted and reset rather than simply nudged. The indicator reads against the mechanism itself rather than from a separate panel. There is no date, no chronograph and no seconds display, and on a dial that is simultaneously openworked, set and monochrome that reduction is structural, since every additional element would have to be found against a field that offers no contrast to find it with.
Within the Royal Oak Concept collection this sits among the gem-set flying tourbillons at 38.5 mm, a group produced in very small numbers and separate in intent from the large technical Concept references, which are 44 mm titanium watches carrying repeaters and chronographs and read as engineering. This group takes the same collection name into a much smaller case and spends everything on setting. Its siblings in the 26227 line use blue sapphires, multicoloured stones, and diamonds paired with a sapphire-set clasp, and the 26228 references alongside use baguette-cut stones. Against all of them, the all-white configuration is the most severe and the least forgiving, because there is no second colour to absorb an imperfection anywhere on the watch.
This reference is for a collector who wants a set tourbillon and wants it to be white the whole way through, which is a more disciplined preference than choosing a colour and a harder one to satisfy. The white alligator strap is the element most buyers will hesitate over, since a pale strap shows its life far more readily than a dark one, and the supplied rubber alternative exists partly for that reason. The slimness is the practical case for the reference, because 11.4 mm means it goes under a cuff where most tourbillons do not. Now that it has left the catalogue the production is closed, and all-white configurations are ordered less often than the coloured ones, which makes them correspondingly harder to find later. The buyer is someone who wants the watch to be one material from end to end and is willing to accept the maintenance that comes with it.
