Audemars Piguet Ellipse Bamboo

Some watches walk into your life and instantly remind you that the seventies were an era of big ideas and even bigger risks. Audemars Piguet was trying on new shapes, new bracelets, new moods. And then there’s this one, an 18k yellow gold ellipse framed in diamonds and carried by a bracelet made by Jean-Pierre Ecoffey, the goldsmith whose initials JPE have become a quiet badge of excellence among collectors. You look at it once and feel AP was having fun. You look at it twice and realize they knew exactly what they were doing.

The bracelet is where the smile starts. Ecoffey was the man behind many of AP’s most supple gold bracelets and this bamboo style is one of his calling cards. Horizontal links echo real bamboo stalks, only smoother, tighter and far more cooperative on the wrist. It drapes with that unmistakable JPE softness, the kind of comfort you only get from someone who treated gold like cloth.

Vintage collectors have been blowing up the Bamboo market lately with intense demand. Here you get it matched with an ellipse head, which means the same Ecoffey magic at a friendlier price and with a silhouette you don’t see every afternoon on Instagram.

The dial follows suit. Clean champagne tone with no theatrics, date or clutter. Just factory diamond indices placed with intention and the older, slimmer AP print. It feels like a snapshot of the brand before modern branding took over, when logos weren’t trying to outshine the watch.

Inside is an ultra-thin manual movement cal. 2003/1 that keeps accurate time and the entire case paper thin.

Wearing this piece feels like stepping into the era when AP hadn’t yet been defined by a single model. They were experimenting and making objects that didn’t require any playbook at all.

It is light on ego, heavy on character and exactly the kind of watch you remember after seeing it once.