Few maisons move as fluidly between watchmaking and jewellery as Piaget. Under CEO Benjamin Comar that duality is not a balancing act but a defining principle. “From the beginning, Piaget approached the watch as a piece of jewellery,” Comar tells Monocle.

“It was always about design, about gold, about how the object sits on the body.” That philosophy crystallised in the late 1960s, when the house introduced bold cuffs and pendant watches – what Comar calls “a jewellery way of wearing time.” Today that spirit remains intact. “There has always been this culture of jewellery watches and watches within a jewellery expression.” It’s a timely position. As the market rediscovers a taste for expressive, design-led pieces, Piaget’s archives feel less like history and more like a blueprint.

But Comar is careful to stress that revival doesn’t mean nostalgia. “We don’t present things in a backward-looking way. We reinterpret them with modern people, modern styling,” he says.

“The aim is not to look back but to make them relevant now.” Keeping good time: Piaget CEO Benjamin Comar (Image: Guillaume Megevand) That relevance lies, in part, in Piaget’s particular brand of boldness – an interplay of elegance and eccentricity. Cocktail rings return alongside sculptural watches; hard-stone dials feel both retro and quietly radical. “There’s always a little extravagance,” says Comar.

“But it must remain refined.” Craftsmanship, however, is where Piaget continues to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded field. The maison’s expertise in ultra-thin movements allows for unusually expressive dials, particularly in hard stone. “Our dials are about 0.4mm thick,” he says.

“You have to find the right part of the stone, cut it, polish it, without breaking it. It’s extremely delicate work.” The result is more poetry than technical showmanship. “When you look into these stones, there is depth,” he says.

“You can look at them like a night sky. There is emotion in them.” In a market increasingly shaped by technology, this tactility matters. “We need one foot in the past and one in the future,” adds Comar.

“Craft reassures us.” Out of the blue: Polo Signature 42 Date Steel Etched in stone: Piaget’s new Sixtie pink gold and blue quartz dial Neck and neck: Piaget’s 2026 Swinging Pebbles collection (Images: Agostino Osio/Courtesy of Piaget) That sense of permanence also underpins Piaget’s response to a more uncertain global climate. While some might frame fine watchmaking as a safe haven, Comar prefers a quieter formulation. “Our role is to create objects that last,” he says.

“Pieces [that] you can wear for 20 or 30 years and then pass on.” He talks of the Polo 79, a watch that Piaget revived in 2024. “That is what we are proud of. Not something opportunistic but something enduring.” It’s a philosophy that finds a natural stage at Watches and Wonders, where Piaget presents its latest collections each spring.

For Comar, the fair remains as vital as ever. “It’s a moment of encounter,” he says. “People thought digital might replace it but it hasn’t.

You need to see the pieces, to feel them on the skin.” Beyond the spectacle it is also a space for exchange between collectors, partners and critics alike. “You have compliments but also criticism,” he says. “That’s important.

It’s a real conversation.” As audiences broaden and more clients attend in person, that conversation is only deepening. But Comar resists over-segmentation in a market often driven by novelty, it’s not about chasing time but designing to outlast it. “We try to show as much as possible to everyone,” he says. “People are mature, they know what they like.”