Inside Bulgari’s rebellion: how the watch industry’s fastest mover does the impossible

Time+Tide

Russell has this theory that Bulgari is the biggest rebel in the entire watchmaking industry. While the rest of the Swiss establishment moves at a snail’s pace, these guys are sprinting – just look at the explosive growth and impressive innovation found in the Octo Finissimo line! So, he travelled to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, to Bulgari’s watchmaking manufacture to figure out exactly how they do it. But more importantly, he wanted to understand why they do it, sitting down with Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Bulgari’s dapper Product Creation Executive Director, for an expansive chat.

Inside Fabrizio’s mind palace

Walking into Mr Stigliani’s office almost feels like stepping directly into his brain. Car books scattered everywhere, engine blocks, ink bottles, and countless sketches… This is where automotive design meets haute horlogerie, where someone who spent years sketching cars at Fiat now creates some of the world’s thinnest timepieces. What will strike you most about Fabrizio is his sketching philosophy. He only draws in pen. No pencil, no eraser, no backspace button. For someone who doesn’t draw, that’s absolutely terrifying. But for him, it’s intentional.

“The sketch is not the most important tool,” he says. “It’s the connection between the fingers and the brain. I can imagine something that doesn’t exist in a very precise way.” He’s right, of course. The sketch is just the consequence, the visual wow factor for press dinners. What matters is the vision, the idea driving the collection forward.

Modern watchmaking meets virtual reality

After Fabrizio creates his pen sketches, they go to a team that brings them to life through digital simulation. This is modern watchmaking happening in real-time. On screens throughout the studio, virtual stress tests determine whether these impossibly thin designs can actually function on your wrist. They’re calculating friction between cogs, airflow around balance wheels, and ensuring the physics work before a single physical component gets made.

Imagine how this same process happened in this town 100 years ago. Paper sketches, complicated mathematics done by hand, endless prototyping. Now it happens instantly, digitally, precisely.

The Finissimo journey: from scepticism to revolution

The Octo Finissimo collection represents roughly 15 years of Fabrizio’s career, though it only launched 12 years ago. When they introduced the first Octo Finissimo Tourbillon at Baselworld, the reception was lukewarm. Thirty pieces in rose gold, the thinnest tourbillon on the market. “Oh, okay. Good, guys. You made 30 pieces of a thin tourbillon,” was the general response.

Then came year two: the minute repeater in titanium. Another 30 pieces. But this changed everything. It was the first Finissimo watch where everything—one colour, one finishing, one material—screamed “look at me, I’m the thinnest.” The aesthetic language matched the technical achievement.

The real game-changer arrived with the third iteration: the automatic three-hand Finissimo. This wasn’t limited. This was the watch that everyone at Bulgari started wearing, Fabrizio included. When they arrived at Basel with the thinnest automatic movement on the market, integrated bracelet, integrated buckle, all in one seamless execution, the industry finally said, “Okay, now we’re talking about a new player on the field.”

The crisis that sparked innovation

The timing of the Finissimo couldn’t have been more perfect. During the Crash of ’08, wealthy people were being photographed leaving offices with chunky watches, and public sentiment shifted dramatically. The Gordon Gecko era ended abruptly. As a designer, Fabrizio picked up on these hidden messages. Something had changed. Nobody wanted to show off their power anymore. “Maybe we need something you can hide,” they thought.

Historically, ultra-thin watches are the most difficult things to make in watchmaking. Before the Finissimo, Bulgari was largely perceived as just another fashion brand in the watch industry. They didn’t have aviation heritage or racing car connections. But they had incredible manufacturing capabilities, and they had something no one expected: the ability to make an ultra-thin watch with a unique Italian design.

Engineering the impossible

Take the Octo Finissimo 8 Days, for instance. The mainspring in this watch measures 0.127mm thick and 76cm long, compared to the standard Finissimo automatic’s 0.095mm mainspring. By making one key component thicker, you are able to keep this watch impossibly thin while achieving eight days of power reserve.

But perhaps Bulgari’s most audacious creation is the ‘Piccolissimo‘ Calibre BVL 100, the world’s smallest mechanical round watch movement. For years, Serpenti watches used quartz movements because producing small mechanical movements at that scale was simply too difficult. Collectors complained, saying they only bought vintage Serpenti pieces from auctions because those had mechanical movements. It took three years of development, but Bulgari completely redesigned everything: the case, the bracelet, the movement itself. Now you can pop the watch head straight out while keeping the bracelet on your wrist. That’s not just watchmaking. That’s design thinking applied to horology.

Breaking Swiss conventions

Here’s where Bulgari truly rebels: the Finissimo Minute Repeater is made in titanium, not precious metal. When Fabrizio proposed this, the response was predictable: “This is the most complicated piece. It must be in noble material.” But Fabrizio understood that titanium’s hardness amplifies sound better than gold ever could in an ultra-thin case. “First of all, we are not Swiss,” he told them. “We have that freedom.”

This is what makes Bulgari different. They get bored easily. They push boundaries because constraints drive aesthetics. Seven world records in a row became ordinary for them, so they created the Finissimo Ultra, thinner than the bezel of a regular Finissimo. It shouldn’t exist, yet it does.

After spending time inside Fabrizio’s world, watching master watchmakers bevel tiny tourbillon cages by hand, seeing perpetual calendars redesigned for actual readability, Russell left convinced: Bulgari isn’t just moving fast. They’re running a completely different race than everyone else in Swiss watchmaking. And that makes all the difference.