Audemars Piguet Opens Its fifteenth AP Home in West Hollywood

For the previous 5 years, Audemars Piguet has been going around the globe launching a lot of salons resembling flats or homes the place the Swiss watchmaker creates an intimate ambiance for shoppers, or potential prospects who benefit from the model. Up to now outposts have been arrange in cities together with Hong Kong, London, Tel Aviv, New York, St. Barth’s, Barcelona, Milan and Munich.

Suppose elegant areas with snug furnishings, smooth interiors, a eating room, a full bar, espresso espresso machines, high-quality artwork on the partitions and a DJ spinning music or a pianist taking part in tunes on a grand piano.

Audemars Piguet launched its AP Home idea in 2018 and has slowly been opening them in main cosmopolitan hubs. Its fifteenth AP Home was not too long ago unveiled in West Hollywood in a Sundown Boulevard penthouse area in the identical constructing that a long time in the past housed the L.A. Playboy Membership on the primary 4 flooring.

What makes this most up-to-date AP Home particular is the Southern California vibe infused into the 6,500-square-foot expanse that has terraces and inside areas with sweeping views towards downtown Los Angeles on one facet and of the Hollywood Hills on the opposite.

Los Angeles inside designer Brigette Romanek picked fashionable modern furnishings in refined colours resembling beige, off-white or sage inexperienced so as to add a relaxed impact to the assorted sitting areas. Loaned art work on the partitions was chosen in partnership with François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles to enrich the furnishings. A small forest of greenery, with vegetation like alocacia, fiddle leaf figs, dracaena and cash timber, create a backyard impact all through.

“Each single AP Home we’ll do within the States could have a singular little seize,” mentioned Ginny Wright, Audemars Piguet’s chief govt officer of the Americas, who was on the town to open the venue. “For Los Angeles, we’re bringing the intellectualism of watchmaking. We created our first watchmakers’ area with a full-time watchmaker on workers. We’ll be doing grasp courses, serving to shoppers see totally different components of a watch. There’ll even be workout routines to assist them put components of the watch collectively to allow them to perceive the physics, engineering and artwork that goes into the watch and makes them distinctive.”

The total-time watchmaker will even service shoppers’ timepieces.

In an adjoining oak-paneled room is a watch vault show space displaying novelty and present timepieces that may be tried on and examined.

Throughout the best way is a recessed eating room with an extended wood desk that may seat as much as 24 individuals for intimate lunches or dinners. “We’ll in all probability do a dinner a month,” Wright mentioned. “We might have a feminine collector group or possibly a collector who desires to usher in all their nice mates or we are able to usher in potential shoppers that we’ve networked with. There will probably be a number of various occasions.”

The eating room area is subsequent to a full bar that may whip up one thing alcoholic or run the espresso espresso maker for one thing extra caffeinated. Being California, there will probably be inexperienced wellness drinks readily available with touches of ginger and turmeric combined up with kale, celery, apple and spinach. “This solely occurs at this AP Home,” Wright mentioned. “In New York, we serve numerous espresso. I imply, a lot espresso all day lengthy.”

At occasions, a piano participant will probably be on the Steinway child grand piano, and there’s a custom-made wood rig arrange for a DJ to spin tunes. It may be pushed down and saved below a counter to clear the area for different makes use of. “These homes are all about stress-free,” Wright mentioned, “and discussing the model.”

Off the principle a part of the penthouse is a big terrace the scale of a lounge. It’s separated by practically 11-foot-high custom-made glass doorways that may be collapsed to let in a contemporary breeze off the Pacific Ocean some 15 miles away. “This door system couldn’t match into the elevator. So, we really needed to get a 300-foot crane and get a allow to close off Sundown Boulevard to convey these doorways in,” Wright defined. “I informed the staff, ‘Inform me when it’s carried out. I can’t cope with this.’ However now we now have one thing that could be very distinctive.”

Audemars Piguet is among the few Swiss watchmakers that’s nonetheless operated by the identical household because it was based in 1875 in Le Brassus, Switzerland. It’s in all probability finest identified for introducing the luxurious sport Royal Oak wristwatch in 1972, which was designed by Gerald Genta. The metal watch was impressed by conventional diving helmets and options uncovered screw heads and a singular case design.

For its fiftieth anniversary, the Swiss watchmaker final yr revealed a espresso desk e-book known as “Royal Oak: From Iconoclast to Icon,” with 400 illustrations retracing the watch’s conception and its rise to recognition.

The e-book was celebrated on the watchmaker’s trendy AP Home in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, which opened final yr. Tennis star Serena Williams was readily available for the occasion.

This story initially ran on WWD.