AMBUSH’s Yoon Ahn and Verbal reimagine the Royal Oak for Audemars Piguet

Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet has never treated the Royal Oak Concept as a heritage object. Since its debut in 2002, the line has functioned more like a laboratory: a place where traditional watchmaking collides with futurism, industrial design, and increasingly, contemporary culture. Its latest experiment arrives via Tokyo-based creative duo Yoon Ahn and Verbal, who have distilled their cross-disciplinary design language into a new limited-edition Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon.

Executed in titanium and limited to 150 pieces, the 38.5mm watch trades maximalism for something sharper and more deliberate. A black aventurine dial opens onto the movement beneath, while a vivid red flying tourbillon pulses at six o’clock like an exposed engine core. The effect is sleek, almost austere, though still unmistakably dramatic — less luxury flex, more engineered object.

That tension between reduction and intensity sits at the centre of the collaboration. “Creativity is always in motion,” Ahn said in a statement accompanying the release. “For me, it was about balance, about creating something truly universal that anyone could connect with.”

The duo’s influence makes sense within the Royal Oak Concept universe. Through AMBUSH, Ahn and Verbal have spent years dissolving the boundaries between streetwear, jewellery, music and high fashion, building a visual language that moves fluidly between subculture and luxury. Rather than simply stamping that identity onto the watch, they’ve pushed the mechanics themselves into focus.

At the centre is Calibre 2982, a hand-wound flying tourbillon movement developed specifically for the project. Much of the dial has been stripped back to expose the architecture beneath, foregrounding the mechanics usually hidden inside luxury watchmaking. The exposed red tourbillon cage — a first for the brand — becomes both visual anchor and conceptual statement: timekeeping rendered visible, almost anatomical.

There is also something unusually restrained about the piece. While luxury collaborations often spiral into branding exercises, this one leans into subtlety and materiality instead. The titanium case is finished with alternating satin-brushed, polished and sandblasted surfaces, while interchangeable rubber straps in black and red add a functional edge that feels closer to contemporary product design than traditional haute horlogerie.

Still, the watch remains deeply tied to the mythology of the Royal Oak Concept itself. Verbal has spoken previously about collecting the original 2002 model, a watch that marked a turning point for experimental watchmaking in the early 21st century. This new edition feels aware of that lineage, but less interested in nostalgia than in rethinking what technical luxury looks like now.

For Audemars Piguet, the collaboration continues a wider strategy of positioning watchmaking within broader cultural conversations rather than treating it as an isolated craft discipline. Increasingly, the brand’s most compelling releases arrive through these intersections — fashion, music, art, design — where technical precision meets contemporary image-making.

With Ahn and Verbal, the result is a watch that feels less like a commemorative object and more like a study in controlled energy: stripped back, exposed, and constantly in motion.