Welcome to our series highlighting the exceptional watches available through PERPETUAL, Phillips’ boutique service offering immediate access to the world’s rarest and most desirable timepieces. You can view all currently available watches by stopping in at our London headquarters at 30 Berkeley Square, or by visiting Phillips PERPETUAL online. Our new "Buy Now" button makes acquiring the watch of your dreams easier than ever.
– ˜By Logan Baker
There’s no one way to define the work of Gérald Genta — because there’s no one way to define Gérald Genta.
Across a career that spanned five decades and several revolutions in the watch world, Genta designed both the icons of modern luxury (the Royal Oak and Nautilus, if you needed reminding) and some of the most technically daring and conceptually playful watches ever made.
Two examples, now offered at Phillips PERPETUAL, capture the remarkable tension at the heart of Genta’s genius. On one end, a Genta-signed minute repeater perpetual calendar, reference G40114, exemplifies his command of high complications and classical proportions. On the other, a Disney-licensed Minnie Mouse “Retro Fantasy” jump hour watch, produced in collaboration with Disneyland Hong Kong, shows his deep-seated belief that watchmaking could be joyful and fun.
Born in Geneva in 1931 to Swiss and Italian parents, Gérald Genta wasn’t trained as a watchmaker — he studied jewelry design. But watches became his medium, and his early freelance work quickly put him on the map. He designed pieces for Omega, Universal Genève, and Patek Philippe before reaching cult status in the 1970s.
Genta’s early rise is often defined by two watches: the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak (1972) and the Patek Philippe Nautilus (1976). Both are stainless steel sports watches that challenged the orthodoxy of traditional design and luxury pricing. Both eventually became cultural monoliths. Genta himself grew somewhat disillusioned with how those designs, particularly the Royal Oak, eclipsed the breadth of his work.
By the late 1980s, Gérald Genta had his own brand and an unmatched appetite for horological complexity. Think tourbillons, minute repeaters, retrograde displays, perpetual calendars. He treated the dial as a canvas, and the movement as a mechanism of expression.
The Genta ref. G40114, for example, is a diamond-set platinum minute-repeating perpetual calendar in a classically styled 34mm round case with a skeletonized dial. It houses a self-winding movement featuring a minute repeater and full perpetual calendar — day, date, month, leap year, and moon-phase.
Fully hand-assembled and engraved, the automatic calibre 210 inside is visible from almost all angles thanks to the open-worked dial and exhibition caseback. This particular example is especially compelling: Numbered "1" on the caseband and featuring movement number 13,000, it was most likely a unique commission, made to order for a dedicated collector of the brand.
Last seen at our Hong Kong Watch Auction: NINE (lot 1002) in 2019, where it achieved a strong result, the watch returns to Phillips in the same excellent condition. For those who missed it the first time, here’s another chance. It's available for immediate purchase from Phillips PERPETUAL, at a price of £99,500.
Then there’s this other watch.
Produced in collaboration with Disneyland Hong Kong in the early 2000s, this Retro Fantasy Jump Hour with Minnie Mouse on the dial is pure Genta magic.
The watch features a jump hour display (seen through a window at nine o’clock) and a retrograde minutes hand that snaps back at the start of every hour; both displays utilize Chinese numerals. This dual jump hour and retrograde minutes layout had become something of a Genta signature during his “Fantasy” period, which included Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Minnie in dozens of expressions and positions.
The real star here, of course, is Minnie Mouse. Dressed in a traditional Chinese robe, she stretches her cartoon hand across the right-hand side of the dial in a sweeping arc, pointing to the mother-of-pearl retrograde minutes track. It's playful but precise. It's available for immediate purchase from Phillips PERPETUAL, at a price of £16,950.
Collectors tend to come to Genta from one of two directions: either through the icons he designed for other brands or through the wildly imaginative, genre-defying pieces he made under his own name. The minute-repeating perpetual calendar ref. G40114 shows what Genta was capable of when he turned his mind toward traditional watchmaking and chased complexity with discipline. The Minnie Mouse Retro Fantasy demonstrates what happened when he decided to reject the old rules entirely.
And the thing is — they’re both incredibly Genta.
Genta's watches were made to challenge, provoke, and entertain. In an industry still obsessed with seriousness, Genta left room for joy. That’s the throughline in these two watches.
You can learn more about the above models and view all the currently in-stock watches online at Phillips PERPETUAL.
Phillips PERPETUAL offers a boutique experience to clients for both the sale and purchase of fine and rare watches, in London’s Berkeley Square, Hong Kong's Pedder Arcade, and the Gstaad Palace, in Switzerland.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade reporting on every aspect of the watch business. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He's based in Geneva.
Visit Phillips PERPETUAL /
30 Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom, W1J 6EX (map)
Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM – 17:30 PM
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00 44 207 901 7916
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