Patek Philippe Ellipse 3738/118 'Ladies' Yellow Gold Blue Dial

Patek Philippe has really only a handful of designs that it has kept making, almost unchanged, for generations. There is the round Calatrava, the sporty Nautilus, and there is this: the Golden Ellipse, the ovoid shape the house introduced in 1968 and has produced ever since. In an industry that constantly reinvents itself, nearly sixty years of continuous production is extraordinary, and it happens for one reason: the design was so right from the start that there has been nothing to fix. The Ellipse is one of the quiet pillars on which Patek stands, a shape so resolved it has simply endured, and this generous yellow-gold version is the design in its warm, classic prime.

Its endurance rests on a discipline that is much harder than it looks: the discipline of leaving things out. This is a watch of almost nothing. There is no date, no second hand to speak of, no numerals, no clutter of any kind, just a softly rounded case, a sunburst dial, two hands, and a ring of slim applied markers. When a watch is this pure, there is nowhere to hide. Every proportion has to be exactly right, the dial colour has to be perfect, the few elements that remain have to be placed with absolute precision, because there is no complication or decoration to distract the eye from a single wrong line. Making something this simple look this effortless is one of the hardest things in design, and the Ellipse has managed it for decades.

The shape itself is the reason for the name, and it hides a rule of beauty. When Patek designed the Golden Ellipse it built the case on the golden ratio, the proportion of roughly one to one-point-six-one-eight that artists and architects have considered the most harmonious since antiquity, the same relationship the eye finds pleasing in classical buildings and in nature. The Ellipse's rounded form embodies that ratio, which is why it looks so balanced and so quietly satisfying without your quite knowing why. It is a watch shaped by a principle older than watchmaking, and that is the secret of its calm.

The dial is the model's other signature, and it glows. It is a deep blue sunburst, darker toward the edges and brighter at the centre, shifting between midnight and steel as the light moves across it, lit by slim gold baton markers and gold hands that pick up the warmth of the case. This blue-and-gold pairing is the look the Ellipse made famous, and against the warm yellow gold here it is especially rich, the cool blue and the warm metal setting each other off beautifully.

The whole watch is rendered in yellow gold, case and bracelet alike, and the bracelet is a joy in itself, a band of gold woven into a soft, supple mesh that drapes around the wrist almost like fabric and flows seamlessly from the case, so the watch reads as a single continuous piece of jewellery. At thirty by thirty-five millimetres this is the larger, more generous Ellipse, a confident and versatile size that wears as an elegant everyday watch, and beneath its pure dial sits a fine Patek Philippe movement kept slim and discreet, finished to the standard the Geneva house brings to everything it makes.

That is what makes this Golden Ellipse so special. It is one of the enduring pillars of the greatest name in watchmaking, a design in continuous production since 1968 because it was simply right from the beginning, and it earns that longevity through the hardest discipline of all, the purity of leaving almost everything out and getting the little that remains perfect. Shaped by the golden ratio, lit by its famous blue-and-gold sunburst, and draped in soft woven yellow gold, it is elegance reduced to its essentials and held there, flawlessly, for the better part of a century.