It has been a few months since the 2026 edition of Watches and Wonders concluded. At that time, amid the frenzy of launches, meetings, interviews and the relentless schedules that follow the world’s largest horological showcase, securing uninterrupted time with Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Bvlgari’s executive director of product creation, feels optimistic at best. Yet when we finally speak, the conversation is anything but hurried. Over the course of a freewheeling discussion, the man who has helped reshape Bvlgari’s standing in modern watchmaking reveals himself to be thoughtful, philosophical and intensely design-minded.

Buonamassa Stigliani occupies an interesting position. Over the past two decades, he has helped transform Bvlgari from a maison admired primarily for its jewellery into one of contemporary horology’s most confident and technically ambitious voices. The record-breaking success of the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo has played no small part in that evolution, but in speaking with him, it quickly becomes clear that his interests extend far beyond thinness, mechanics or world records. “I love objects,” he says at one point, almost casually. It is perhaps the simplest possible distillation of a philosophy that draws as much from architecture, furniture and Italian industrial design as it does from the codes of traditional watchmaking.

Buonamassa Stigliani identifies first and foremost as an industrial designer. In his career, he has designed, among other things, motorcycles, cars, jewellery, sunglasses, and watches. He sketches constantly, but not loosely or impressionistically. His drawings are well-formed from the outset; he can see the mechanics and components of the object in detail, allowing him to render them on paper. When asked whether the maison’s pursuit of ever-greater technical performance makes it harder to preserve beauty in design, Buonamassa Stigliani gently rejects the premise altogether. To him, the two cannot be separated.

What follows is less an explanation than a philosophy of design itself. It is one shaped as much by Italian industrial culture, which he regards with respect, as by traditional watchmaking. An object that privileges beauty without function, he argues, belongs to the realm of art. One that functions perfectly but lacks emotional resonance is merely engineering. True design exists somewhere in between: where utility, ergonomics and aesthetics are resolved into a single coherent idea. In Italy, he explains, there exists a longstanding understanding of design as art applied to industry – a philosophy where beauty and utility are expected to coexist rather than compete.

It is an outlook that helps explain why Bvlgari approaches watchmaking differently from many of its contemporaries. Buonamassa Stigliani repeatedly returns to the notion that constraints themselves should shape aesthetics. The challenge of ultra-thin watchmaking, for example, is not simply a technical one. The limitation becomes the design language. The engineering informs the beauty.

At one point, he references the exposed engine of a classic Ferrari F40 as an example of engineering elevated through emotion and visual drama. Even the screws, he suggests, deserve consideration beyond pure utility. “Mechanics has its own aesthetics,” he says.

“If an object is just beautiful but doesn’t work, it is a piece of art. If it works, but it’s not built, then it is merely a piece of engineering. So industrial design has to combine these two different worlds, for something to be the most beautiful object that also has to work in a proper way.” A perfect example of an area in which the company has been very successful in combining beauty and precision is the Octo Finissimo. Bvlgari has just unveiled a new 37mm interpretation of the timepiece, a release that generated considerable acclaim during Watches and Wonders. Since 2014, when the maison first released the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon, setting a record for the thinnest-ever tourbillon at just 5mm, they have gone on to amass a string of world records in mechanical advancements. The Octo Finissimo feels less like a singular product line and more like a manifesto; the collection has become synonymous with ultra-thin watchmaking, repeatedly setting new benchmarks while reshaping perceptions of what contemporary luxury sports watches could look (and feel) like.

Thinness was never an end in itself. The challenge was to create a watch that remained entirely usable despite its complexity. Something technically radical that still felt intuitive in everyday life. “The user experience is very important,” Buonamassa Stigliani says. “You have to be able to read the time. You have to be able to wear the watch.” That philosophy extends far beyond the movement itself. Buonamassa Stigliani speaks with equal attention about the ergonomics of a bracelet, the tactility of a clasp and the physical ease with which a watch integrates into daily life. In his view, these details should exist at the same level as the technical mechanical achievements, not beneath it. Ideally, the engineering disappears seamlessly into the experience of wearing the object.

For Buonamassa Stigliani, the impact of the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo extends far beyond the records it accumulated. What interests him more is how the project permanently altered Bvlgari’s internal philosophy around watchmaking itself. Ultra-thin horology, he explains, demanded an entirely different way of thinking. “It’s like a Formula One car,” he explains. “Each component has to add something to achieve the result.” In a space where fractions of a millimetre become consequential, unnecessary gestures quickly reveal themselves. Decorative elements without purpose begin to feel incompatible with the object altogether.

What emerged was not simply a thinner watch, but a more disciplined design language. “There is a watch business unit before the Octo and a watch business unit after the Octo Finissimo,” he reflects. The shift was cultural as much as technical. Initially introduced through highly limited complicated pieces, the collection eventually evolved into serially produced ultra-thin automatic watches. This was a move that fundamentally changed perceptions of Bvlgari within contemporary watchmaking circles. It helped prove that such engineering could exist at scale within the maison’s own manufacturing ecosystem.

Buonamassa Stigliani still speaks about those developments with a degree of disbelief, particularly when discussing the evolution of Bvlgari’s movements. Advances like the Piccolissimo Calibre BVF 100, he suggests, emerged through years of accumulated experimentation around miniaturisation, efficiency and spatial problem-solving. “Honestly,” he admits at one point, “it was something that we were not able to imagine ten years ago.”

Despite Bvlgari’s increasingly formidable standing within Swiss watchmaking, Buonamassa Stigliani repeatedly returns to Italy as the emotional centre of his creative vocabulary. He talks not in abstractions, but through places, colours and sensations: the blues of Capri, Mediterranean light, the greens of Sardinia, the warmth embedded within Italian visual culture. It becomes clear that his understanding of luxury differs subtly from the colder expressions of perfection sometimes associated with haute horology. Precision matters deeply, but so too does emotion. Objects must feel alive. They must possess personality, sensuality and a certain ease.

That sensibility increasingly defines Bvlgari’s watchmaking identity. Rather than attempting to emulate Swiss restraint, the maison has leaned further into its Roman perspectives of expressive geometry, jewellery-inflected design language and a more tactile understanding of elegance.

Buonamassa Stigliani returns repeatedly to the idea of reduction. Removing what feels unnecessary. Allowing quality, material and proportion to speak more quietly for themselves. It is difficult not to recognise the parallel with his watches. Even the most technically ambitious examples of Bvlgari’s modern output retain a sense of discipline beneath their expressiveness. That confidence comes from clarity. His perspective perhaps also reflects a broader Italian design sensibility, where beauty rarely exists in isolation from usability or everyday life. When asked what still excites him after years of record-breaking achievements and industry acclaim, Buonamassa Stigliani’s answer is revealing. He speaks less about technical milestones than about reinterpretation. His challenge, he says, is to continue finding new ways of expressing Bvlgari’s identity without losing the essence of the brand itself. He talks animatedly about imagining the evolution of the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo over the next decade, of revisiting icons like Serpenti through unexpected perspectives, and of combining aesthetic codes in ways that still feel unmistakably Bvlgari. He references pieces like the Monete paired with Milanese mesh bracelets, combinations that introduced unfamiliar elements while somehow remaining entirely coherent within the maison’s visual language.

“I love these kinds of things,” he says. “Putting together different aesthetics. They talk about the brand in a different way.” Perhaps that is ultimately what defines Buonamassa Stigliani’s approach to design. Neither reinvention for its own sake, nor reverence toward heritage as something static, but a constant process of refinement and evolution. Under his direction, Bvlgari’s watch division has become more technically accomplished for sure but it has also developed a deeply confident point of view; one rooted in Italian industrial culture, emotional clarity and the belief that beauty and function are at their most powerful when they become inseparable.

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