Polo

The Piaget Polo was born in 1979 at the behest of Yves Piaget, a direct descendant of the founding family and then at the creative helm of the maison. Yves described the sport of polo as "athletic, demanding and precise", a perfect synthesis of sporting energy and aristocratic refinement: it is precisely this duality that becomes the guiding concept of the new watch, designed for an audience that frequented sports fields as much as the drawing rooms of international high society.

The most revolutionary feature of the original Polo (reference 761 C701) is the bracelet entirely integrated with the 18-carat gold case: case and bracelet form a single continuous body, with no visible break between them, decorated with "gadroon" fluting — small convex grooves — that extend onto the dial as well, creating a visual continuity unprecedented in the Piaget catalogue of the time. The integrated-case concept, already explored by other manufactures in the previous decade, is here taken to a level of formal coherence that immediately becomes the model's distinctive hallmark.

The Polo fits perfectly into the glamorous spirit of the late 1970s and early 1980s: its admirers include Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol, while in 1980 former Bond girl Ursula Andress becomes the model's ambassador, wearing it at the awards ceremony of the Palm Beach Polo World Championship. In 1985 Yves Piaget organizes one of the most memorable promotional stunts in the brand's history: an actual horseback ride down Fifth Avenue in New York, to underscore the symbolic link between the watch and the sport that gave it its name.

After a long period in which the Polo remains almost unchanged as a luxury icon for the few, the collection undergoes a profound shift in 2016 with the launch of the Polo S: the first stainless-steel version, designed to open the line to a wider audience and a more contemporary aesthetic language, with a "cushion" dial and horizontal fluting. In 2021 comes the Polo Skeleton, introducing the fully openworked ultra-thin caliber 1200S, while in 2023 the manufacture presents an ultra-thin perpetual calendar version based on the caliber 1255P, just 4 mm thick: a way of bringing back into the Polo the ultra-thin soul that has always characterized Piaget. In 2025, on the occasion of Watches and Wonders, the brand celebrates its roots with the Polo 79, a reissue faithful to the aesthetic and proportions of the original 1979 model.