For extra insider watch protection, get Field + Papers, GQ’s e-newsletter dedicated to the watch world, despatched to your inbox each Thursday. Join right here.
Here’s a brief checklist of issues which are extremely scorching within the watch world proper now (or at all times have been):
- The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
- Ceramic, the hard-wearing scratch-proof materials, that manufacturers like AP and Hublot ceaselessly use to make items in vibrant showstopping colours
- “Panda” dials (which means a white dial with black sub registers)
Till now, nonetheless, there hasn’t been a watch that mixed this holy trinity into one single piece. That each one modified when Ed Sheeran wore this Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar on the Nation Music Awards this week.
Ed Sheeran on the 58th Academy of Nation Music Awards from Ford Heart at The Star on Might 11, 2023 in Frisco, Texas. (Picture by Dusana Risovic/Penske Media through Getty Photos)Penske Media/Getty Photos
Penske Media
A consultant for AP confirms this can be a distinctive Royal Oak made particularly for Sheeran. The singer’s watch is impressed by one of many model’s present perpetual calendars, which can also be made out of ceramic however with a navy dial. Sheeran’s model is actually hanging, with a full snow-white dial and a quartet of intense black subdials. In fact, it’s a watch solely a super-collector like Sheeran—who moonlights as a Hodinkee contributor—would have.
Sheeran is a fan of accumulating and producing distinctive watches like this one. He owns one other {custom} Royal Oak: a black-and-gold chronograph with an eight-point star at 12 o’clock to represent August (the eighth month), when his daughter was born. He additionally wears a custom-made, black-and-red, Darth Maul-looking Nautilus together with his initials on it. Sheeran loves distinctive items a lot, he teamed up with Tudor to supply a sequence of watches for the crew who labored on his Divide tour. Nonetheless, this new white-and-black AP is perhaps one of the best of the bunch.
Alexander Scheuber/Getty Photos
Lionel Messi’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
Final 12 months, AP celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its flagship Royal Oak. The model spun the be careful in a variety of special-edition flavors to commemorate the event. The smoked inexperienced dial may not be the flashiest in the gathering—which additionally included full yellow-gold tourbillon items and skeleton dials—however celebrities like Messi have gravitated towards it since its launch.
Selection/Getty Photos
Lil Nas X’s Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Carbon
Lil Nas X’s dedication to the bit is admirable. After he danced with the satan—actually—in his video for “Montero” after which launched a pair of satanic Nikes (allegedly) injected with a drop of human blood, he’s now bringing everybody’s (least?) favourite keeper of the underworld into his watch assortment, too. Relatively than the extra apparent Bulova Satan Diver (a terrific watch!), the rapper opted for this Roget Dubuis with extra refined ties to Devil. “The Excalibur Spider Carbon 45MM is valued at $666,000,” a press release from the model learn. “The variety of the beast.”
Icon Sportswire/Getty Photos
Courtesy of Patek Philippe
Tommy Hilfiger’s Patek Philippe Nautilus
The Tiffany-blue Nautilus is like The place’s Waldo?: You by no means know the place you’re going to identify it, but it surely’s at all times thrilling if you do. It was a reasonably protected guess the watch would seem on the F1 race in Miami, however who would have guessed it could be on the wrist of clothier Hilfiger? That is the hype watch to finish all hype watches. When it was first launched, it offered at public sale for $5.6 million. Clearly, there isn’t a watch collector that may resist this piece: it’s attracted Leonardo DiCaprio, architect Daniel Abraham, and now Hilfiger.
Randall Park’s Cartier Cloche de Cartier
“I similar to bizarre watches,” Park instructed GQ on the Gold Gala. That is actually a humorous one: impressed by the form of these domes (the cloche) used to cowl meals. This watch was launched by means of Cartier’s Privé assortment, which exhumes iconic designs from the model’s archives.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings