Why an octagonal watch case?

People ask why our watch is called The Octagon, and why anyone would machine eight flat sides into a steel case when a lathe makes a round one so willingly. The short answer: every extra side is extra work, and the work is the point. The longer answer runs through a century of watchmaking and one caged arena in Denver.

What does the octagon mean at Reigi?

To us it is the geometry of a testing ground. The most famous octagon of our time is the arena where fighters find out what their preparation was worth — the shape of a space built for effort under pressure. Our Signature Series with Tom Aspinall, an edition of 28 for the 28th UFC heavyweight champion, made that connection explicit. On the Cornerstone watches the same idea sits quieter: eight sides of 316L steel, brushed and polished by hand in our atelier, an arena reduced to architecture on the wrist.

Did the octagon exist in watches before the famous sports watches?

Yes, by decades. The first Rolex Oyster of 1926 — the watch generally credited with making the waterproof wristwatch a reality, though earlier makers had sealed cases of their own — was offered with an octagonal case alongside a cushion-shaped one. The grip for assembly came from elsewhere: the coin-milled bezel gave the watchmaker purchase to screw the case parts down tight, while the octagon itself served the eye — the Art Deco taste of the day rendered in steel and gold. Mercedes Gleitze wore an octagonal-cased Oyster during her 1927 Channel-swim publicity feat. Through the 1920s and 30s the octagon remained a recognized Art Deco form — geometry and symmetry worked into gold dress watches.

Then came 1972. Three distributors asked Audemars Piguet for a sporty steel watch, and Gérald Genta sketched the Royal Oak overnight, drawing — by his own account — on a diver's helmet he had seen fitted as a child: eight bolts and a rubber seal protecting a life underwater. To be precise: what is octagonal on the Royal Oak is the bezel, held by eight hexagonal screws, on a rounded monocoque case. The screws are hexagonal so their embedded heads stay put when locked from beneath, and the gasket was left deliberately visible. It launched at the Basel Fair in 1972, a steel watch priced like gold, and it made the luxury steel sports watch a category of its own.

Girard-Perregaux followed in 1975 with the Laureato — again an octagonal bezel, set on a circular base over a tonneau-shaped case. Watch lore long credited its design to the Italian architect Adolfo Natalini, but Girard-Perregaux itself credits an unnamed in-house designer — the attribution is legend rather than record.

The octagonal case itself belongs to Bulgari. Genta designed the original Octo under his own name in 1994; Bulgari acquired his brand in 2000 and relaunched the Octo in 2012 under Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani — a round bezel over a resolutely octagonal case, the whole carrying 110 facets, each one polished or satin-brushed. The trade press cites it as an exceptional finishing burden, and rightly so.

We tell this history and claim none of it as ours. These watches earned their place. What we share with them is only the conviction that eight sides are worth the trouble.

Why is the fighting arena eight-sided?

Because a boxing ring was dangerous for mixed martial arts — by the founders' accounts, grapplers could tumble through the ropes or get tangled in a square corner where one fighter pins another. The eight-sided cage that debuted at UFC 1 on 12 November 1993 in Denver keeps the athletes inside and gives them a neutral arena. Eight sides also looked unmistakable on television, distinct from a four-sided ring. As for who invented it, the credit is disputed among several people involved in that first event, so we name nobody. What matters is the logic: the shape was chosen so that skill, and only skill, decides the outcome.

What do eight sides cost in hand-finishing?

Edges. The grammar of case finishing puts contrasting treatments on adjacent surfaces — a brushed plane beside a mirror-polished flank — and runs a polished bevel along the edge between them. A round case has one continuous edge per band. An octagon has eight flats, eight corners, and eight transition lines per band, and every one of those boundaries must stay crisp. Where brushed meets polished, the line is the quality tell: sharp means skill, blurred means a slip. Collectors of vintage watches treat softened facet edges as damage for good reason — careless polishing rounds a line off forever.

On our case the brushing and polishing are done by hand, which means every corner is a small examination with a permanent grade. This is why the shape suits us. Our whole craft is built on doing things the slow way where the slow way shows — the modified ETA 6498, the hand-woven silver mesh, the heat-blued hands. Eight sides put that standard on the outside of the watch, where anyone with a loupe can check it.

So why an octagonal case?

Because it is a shape that keeps score. A round case forgives; an octagon records exactly how carefully you worked, edge by edge. For a watch built around effort — made in Finland, one at a time — that seemed like the right architecture to live in.