Rose gold with blue sapphires is the warm-metal version of this reference, and it produces a completely different watch from the white gold one it sits beside. White gold behind blue stones is neutral and lets the colour read exactly as it is. Rose gold does not. The warmth of the metal pushes against the cool of the sapphires, and rather than fighting each other the two set up the strongest colour contrast anywhere in the collection. The openworked rose gold dial and the bezel are set with baguette-cut blue sapphires, the hands are openworked rose gold, and the case is 38.5 mm across and 11.6 mm thick. It is no longer part of the current collection.
The case measures 38.5 mm across and 11.6 mm thick in rose gold, slim for a tourbillon and the reason this is a watch that gets worn rather than kept aside. The metal is the decision that defines the reference. Setting cool stones into warm gold is the harder pairing to bring off, because the two are working against each other rather than reinforcing, and it succeeds here largely because the dial is openworked, so the sapphires are not sitting on a solid gold ground but floating over a mechanism. That distance is what stops the contrast becoming a clash. The dial is openworked rose gold set with baguette-cut blue sapphires. Openworking a dial that is also being set is a compounding problem rather than two separate ones, since every aperture cut for the movement removes metal a stone might otherwise have occupied, and baguettes make it worse than brilliants do. A brilliant can be seated wherever a mount exists; a baguette has to align in a straight run with its neighbours, so the openwork and the setting have to be resolved against each other rather than in sequence, and a stone slightly out of line is immediately obvious. The bezel is set the same way, which distinguishes the 26228 references from the 26227 line where the setting stops at the inner bezel. Carrying baguettes around an octagonal bezel means eight straight runs meeting at eight corners, and rectangular stones make those corners unforgiving. The hands are openworked rose gold, skeletonised so they cross the mechanism without concealing it, and they tie the dial back to the case. The strap is hand-stitched light blue alligator in a large square scale with a rose gold folding clasp set with baguette-cut blue sapphires, and a light blue rubber strap with a constellation decoration is supplied alongside. The clasp being rose gold rather than white is the detail that completes the argument, because a white gold clasp would have introduced a third metal on a watch built around exactly two materials. It also puts warm metal against the underside of the wrist where only the owner encounters it. Between the two straps the difference is real rather than cosmetic: alligator with a set clasp holds the reference in the register the stones imply, and the textured rubber takes the same watch somewhere considerably less careful.
The movement carries a flying tourbillon and a power reserve display, with hours and minutes. A flying tourbillon has no bridge over the rotating carriage and is supported from beneath, so the assembly turns apparently unsupported and stays visible from the dial side, which is why it belongs with an openworked dial and why the two are really one decision rather than two. The power reserve display is the practical complication and reports how much running time remains before the watch stops. That matters more on a tourbillon than on an ordinary watch, since a movement of this kind left to run down has to be restarted and reset rather than simply picked up and shaken into motion, and the indicator reads against the mechanism rather than needing a panel of its own. There is no date, no chronograph and no seconds display, which on a dial that is openworked and baguette-set at once is structural rather than a matter of taste.
Within the Royal Oak Concept collection this sits among the gem-set flying tourbillons at 38.5 mm, a group distinct in purpose from the large technical Concept references, which are 44 mm titanium watches carrying repeaters and chronographs and are read as engineering. The internal division in the gem-set group is between the brilliant-cut 26227 line and the baguette-cut 26228 line, which is a division of difficulty as much as of style. Within the 26228 references the alternatives are baguette sapphires in white gold and baguette diamonds in white gold, so this is the only warm-metal execution in the group and by some distance the most assertive. Anyone choosing between them is really choosing whether they want the stones to be observed or the contrast to be.
This reference is for a collector who wants a coloured setting and wants the metal to argue with it rather than defer to it. That is a confident position and a rare one, since the safe move with blue stones is white gold and almost everyone takes it. The baguette cut is the second layer of the same confidence, being the harder execution and the one that suits the Royal Oak's flat surfaces and eight corners better than any round stone could. At 11.6 mm the watch goes under a cuff where most tourbillons do not, which is the practical argument for the whole group. Now that the reference has left the catalogue the production is closed, and rose gold baguette-set coloured-stone references are produced in the smallest quantities in the collection. The buyer is someone who wants to be the only person wearing it and knows they will be.
