The Piaget Art of Colour is not a campaign theme conjured by a marketing department on a Monday morning. It is, as Jean-Bernard Forot, Piaget’s senior manager of heritage, puts it, ‘a foundational expression’ of what the Swiss watchmaker has always been, stretching back to a decision made in 1963 to dress watch dials in sliver-thin slices of ornamental hardstone: turquoise, tiger’s eye, coral, lapis lazuli, jade.
Piaget was founded in 1874, and the move into coloured stone dials was, for a traditional Swiss manufacturer, a departure of some nerve. It was made possible, technically, by the introduction in 1957 of the 9P ultra-thin winding movement, which gave stone-cutters the room to work at genuinely radical thinness. The dial ceased to be a face and became, in Forot’s phrase, ‘the new territory of creative expression’.
The Grandsons, the Catwalk and the 21st Century Collection
The stone dials were the opening move. Under the creative direction of Valentin Piaget, grandson of founder Georges, and later with the arrival of Valentin’s nephew Yves, the watchmaker remade itself as an international luxury brand in which jewellery and timepieces were given equal weight. Valentin’s strategy included a commitment to precious materials over steel at a time when Swiss manufacturers were moving firmly in the other direction, and a directive to send designers to the Paris catwalk shows to absorb whatever was in the air.
What was in the air, in the late 1960s, was considerable. Pop art, op art, the youthquake, a new generation of independent working women with money and opinions: Piaget’s response was the 21st Century collection, unveiled at the Basel jewellery show in 1969. Long sautoirs, deep openwork cuffs, hand-textured bracelets and rings arrived in strong, almost combative colour combinations: lapis lazuli with jade, turquoise with coral. Goldwork was no longer structural but sculptural, worked into what the maison calls palace décor, a hand-engraving that became a defining signature. Unconventional shapes, particularly the trapezoid, signalled dynamism and a fresh playfulness.
Stéphanie Sivrière, director of the Piaget design studio for jewellery, high jewellery and watchmaking, describes the current collection’s approach: ‘For Piaget, The Art of Colour is far more than a mere stylistic choice; it’s a foundational expression of our identity and this is why, to me, it is all about the chromatic harmony in our creations. I associate colours and fine gemstones with ornamental stones to give life to our designs. Jewellery means emotion.’
Piaget Art of Colour and the Novelties That Carry It Forward
This year’s Piaget Art of Colour theme connects the watches, fine jewellery and the Colours of Extraleganza high jewellery collection, the third chapter of Extraleganza, a name coined to define the maison’s particular blend of elegance, extravagance and exuberance. In June 2026, Piaget announced the Colors of Extraleganza as a 65-piece high jewellery collection, according to LeadIQ.
Among the pieces that carry the theme into the present, the Swinging Pebble Sautoir watch reimagines Piaget’s 1974 Kimono pocket watch. Three asymmetrical, pebble-shaped watches, each carved from an ornamental stone (golden tiger’s eye, grass green verdite or azure blue pietersite), swing on handmade twisted gold chains, with case and dial fully integrated into the stone itself. It is a piece that requires you to look twice before you understand what you are seeing.
The Sixtie, Piaget’s first entirely new model since the 1990s, launched in 2025. Its soft trapeze-shaped case, with a gadrooned bezel, references the sautoirs of the 21st Century collection and shape-shifts between square, round and cushion depending on the angle. In The Art of Colour edition, the dial is Brazilian blue quartz. Revolution Watch notes that, thanks to its quartz movement, the watch achieves an impressively thin profile of just 6.5mm. At Watches and Wonders 2026, LeadIQ reports, Piaget also unveiled the Polo 79 with a sodalite dial, the ultra-thin Altiplano AUC Tiger Eye, an updated Sixtie on strap, and further Swinging Pebbles sautoirs, confirming the breadth of the collection across price points and disciplines.
New stones are threading their way into the vocabulary: blue and violet dumortierite, sodalite. Forot marks the shift in register: ‘Colour was about joy, optimism and boldness, now it’s an artistic narrative. Colour is used to create chromatic power, as well as kinetic and architectural effects, especially in mosaics and marquetry.’ The black opal, long a Piaget signature and a particular enthusiasm of Yves Piaget, reappears on the dial of the Essential watch, set within amorphous, organic goldwork that draws a direct line back to the freeform experimentation of the 1970s.
The Possession Vibrant Palace series brings the same energy to Piaget’s rotating-band Possession collection, first launched in 1990: mosaics of ornamental stones in blue, turquoise, dumortierite and sodalite, set against palace décor goldwork on rings, bracelets and medallions that move and spin, a quiet nod to the kinetic art movement that preoccupied the 1960s avant-garde. ‘We never copy heritage,’ Forot says. ‘It is about interpreting the energy of the original inspiration, channelling the creative freedom.’ The Colours of Extraleganza 65-piece collection is where that interpretation reaches its most ambitious register, and where the Piaget Art of Colour argument is made most fully.
