This is the baguette-cut diamond version of the 38.5 mm Royal Oak Concept flying tourbillon, and the cut is the entire argument. Baguettes are rectangular stones with flat facets and long straight edges, and a run of them produces broad flashes and hard parallel lines where brilliant cuts produce scattered shimmer. That geometry suits the Royal Oak case better than any other setting does, because the case itself is built from flat surfaces and eight corners and a baguette run repeats that logic rather than softening it. The openworked white gold dial is set this way, the white gold inner bezel is set with baguettes as well, and the folding clasp matches. The case is 38.5 mm across and 11.6 mm thick, and it is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 38.5 mm across and 11.6 mm thick in white gold, which is slim for a tourbillon and the reason this reference ends up in regular use rather than in a safe. White gold and diamonds share a colour temperature, so the setting extends the metal rather than sitting on top of it, and the whole front of the watch reads as one continuous bright surface interrupted only by the mechanism showing through. The dial is openworked white gold set with baguette-cut diamonds, and setting an openworked dial is a compounding difficulty rather than two problems in sequence, since every aperture cut for the movement removes metal that a stone might have occupied. Baguettes make that considerably worse than brilliants do. A brilliant can be seated almost anywhere a mount exists; a baguette has to align with its neighbours in a straight run, so the openwork pattern and the setting layout have to be resolved against one another rather than one after the other, and any stone slightly out of line is visible immediately in a way a round stone never would be. The inner bezel is white gold set with baguette-cut diamonds, carrying the straight-line treatment to the edge of the dial. The hands are openworked white gold, skeletonised so they cross the movement rather than concealing it. The strap is hand-stitched white alligator in a large square scale with a white gold folding clasp set with baguette-cut diamonds, and a white constellation-textured rubber strap is supplied alongside. Matching the second strap in white rather than substituting a dark one is consistent with the rest of the watch and is also the more useful answer. A black alternative would have solved the practical problem by abandoning the design, where white rubber solves it while keeping the piece intact, since rubber tolerates handling that pale alligator does not. The constellation texture gives the two straps a difference in surface rather than in colour, which is the only axis a monochrome reference has left to work with.
The movement carries a flying tourbillon and a power reserve display, with hours and minutes. A flying tourbillon is supported from below with no bridge crossing the carriage, so the assembly appears unsupported and remains visible from the front, which is why it is paired with an openworked dial here and why the two decisions are really one. The power reserve display is the practical complication and reports how much running time is left before the watch stops, which carries more weight on a tourbillon than elsewhere because a movement of this kind that runs down must be restarted and reset rather than simply nudged back into life. The indicator is read against the openworked mechanism rather than from a separate panel, so it costs the design nothing. There is no date, no chronograph and no seconds display. On a dial that is simultaneously openworked and baguette-set, that reduction is structural, because every additional element would have to find room in a layout where the stones and the mechanism have already claimed everything.
Within the Royal Oak Concept collection this belongs to the gem-set flying tourbillons at 38.5 mm, a group separate in intent from the large technical Concept references, which are 44 mm titanium pieces carrying repeaters and chronographs and read as engineering exercises. The division inside the gem-set group is between the 26227 line, which uses brilliant cuts, and the 26228 line, which uses baguettes, and that is a division of difficulty rather than only of appearance. Within the 26228 references the alternatives are blue sapphires in white gold and blue sapphires in rose gold, so this all-diamond white gold configuration is the most classical of the three and the one that reads as luxury most immediately.
This reference suits a collector who wants the most demanding setting Audemars Piguet executes and wants it in the most conventional stone. That combination is less contradictory than it sounds: the difficulty is in the cut and the discipline of the runs, not in the colour, and a buyer who knows that will see the work while everyone else sees a diamond watch. The white alligator strap will divide opinion, since pale hide shows its life quickly, and the supplied rubber alternative exists partly for that reason. At 11.6 mm the watch fits under a cuff where most tourbillons do not. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and baguette-set tourbillons are produced in the smallest quantities in the collection. The buyer is someone who wants the case and the setting to be arguing the same thing.
