Boxer Anthony Joshua spotted wearing a Audemars Piguet

Anthony Joshua was photographed in Saudi Arabia in fight-week build-up wearing one of Audemars Piguet's most technically and aesthetically ambitious Royal Oak variants — the full white ceramic Perpetual Calendar, reference 26579CB, distinguished by its deep blue Grande Tapisserie dial and contrasting silver subdials. It is precisely the kind of statement piece that reads quietly to civilians and loudly to anyone who knows.

The Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar ref. 26579CB sits at the upper tier of the Royal Oak family. Its case and bracelet are crafted entirely from white ceramic — a material that demands significantly more complex machining than steel or even gold, given ceramic's hardness and brittleness. AP's ability to replicate the Royal Oak's intricate eight-sided bezel with its chamfered edges and signature exposed hexagonal screws in this material is a genuine technical achievement. The blue Grande Tapisserie dial — AP's iconic hobnail-pattern guilloche — provides the model's visual anchor, with silver-toned subdials at 3, 6, and 9 o'clock displaying the perpetual calendar's day, month, and moon phase readouts respectively.

The movement inside is Calibre 5134, AP's self-winding perpetual calendar engine, operating at 19,800 vph with a 40-hour power reserve. Crucially, the mechanism accounts for the unequal lengths of calendar months, leap years included, and requires no manual date correction until 2100. It is a horological classic in a thoroughly modern package.

For collectors, the white ceramic Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar occupies a specific niche — simultaneously a tool-watch descendant of Gérald Genta's 1972 original and a dressed-up complication piece. The ref. 26579CB in this blue-dial configuration is relatively scarce in the secondary market, with white ceramic proving perennially more difficult to source than steel equivalents. It sits firmly among the most collectible Royal Oak references in production.

Joshua's pre-fight wardrobe choice is consistent with his established taste for significant horology. The UK list price sits at £91,500, placing this firmly in grail territory. On current grey-market conditions, expect a meaningful premium over retail given ceramic Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar demand.