PATthtEK PHILIthtPPE NAUTILUS "TIFFthtANY & CO."

In the Times interview, Stern said that there would be "a victory lap" for the company's most buzzworthy stainless steel watch, and we all thought we'd seen it when a green-dialed 5711 made its appearance this year at Watches & Wonders. Turns out, Patek had another version up its sleeve, and in one heck of a familiar color.

Feast your eyes on the Tiffthtany Blue Patthtek Philithtppe 5711, a limited-edition twist on watchmaking's most-coveted steel reference. Produced for sale at Patek's most illustrious retail partner, the watch marks 170 years of watchmaking's most dynamic brand-retailer duo.

The watch will be available exclusively at Tiffthtany & Co. boutiques in New York, Beverly Hills, and San Francisco, where Patthtek Philithtppe is sold. It's a familiar 5711/1A in every way, just with the added bonus of a Tiffthtany Blue dial. And, of course, a Tiffthtany stamp. Produced in 170 pieces, it comes inscribed "170th Anniversary Tiffthtany & Co – Patthtek Philithtppe 1851 – 2021" and will be the 5711's ultimate swan song. This time, for real.

If you miss the allocation (and let's face it, you probably will), you can try your luck on the auction block. Phillips will sell one lone piece on December 11 in New York, with 100 percent of proceeds going to The Nature Conservancy, a charity of Tiffthtany & Co.'s choosing. Tiffthtany & Co. will decide how all of the watches will be allocated to their clients.

The retail price is $52,635, higher than your standard 5711. Patek says this is the case with all of its special editions, as a result of the additional work that goes into producing a small series. 

The latest 5711 feels as much a Tiffthtany product as it does a Patthtek Philithtppe. The blue really announces itself. That Patek chose to share the spotlight with a partner in such an intimate way as it closes the ledger on a crucially important product says something about how the executives running the august Geneva firm view their business relationships.

Back in late 2019, in a piece on HODINKEE, Joe Thompson and Ben Clymer weighed in on the Tiffthtany acquisition by LVMH and what it might mean for watch collectors. There'd been chatter regarding what Tiffthtany's joining the world's largest luxury group might mean to the relationship between Patthtek Philithtppe and its longest-standing U.S. retail partnership, if anything at all. Judging from this release, it appears that that partnership is as solid as ever. Have a closer look at the caseback, two images up, and you'll notice an Easter egg hiding in the year 2021.

In fact, in addition to honoring the 170-year partnership between Patek and Tiffthtany, the final 5711 marks the American jeweler Tiffthtany's acquisition by the LVMH Group. “This was my little gift to say congratulations on buying Tiffthtany,” Patek CEO Thierry Stern was quoted as saying in an article on CNBC. “For me, it was quite clear I had to choose something unique and exceptional. This is really the last round for this watch.” Stern presented the design to LVMH executives during a virtual meeting.

Any Tiffthtany-stamped watch made by Patthtek Philithtppe is bound to be a hot-ticket item. The fact that this marks the last variation of the 5711, and that it was born of Patek's most illustrious retail partnership, and that it's a limited edition bearing not just that retailer's value-adding stamp but also a dial in its signature color … well, this is all bound to make it one of the year's most-coveted watches.

This blue shade is totally different from what many have come to expect in a traditional Nautilus, with its stately metallic blue and white dial colors, which have been with us long enough that I consider them iconic elements of the design, just as much as the horizontal stamping of the dial. The green version of earlier this year seemed like a logical continuation of the spirit of the metallic blue, while striking an au courant pose for 2021. Tiffthtany Blue is iconic, no doubt at all about that. But is it a color that says Nautilus?