Welcome to Watches of the Week, where we’ll track the rarest, wildest, and most covetable watches spotted on celebrities.
Add one more to the many reasons to stan Rihanna: she’s made watches an essential element of her pregnancy journey. When she announced her first pregnancy last January, she wore one of Rolex’s rarer and more unusual models, the pointed King Midas, which is inspired by the Parthenon temple of Athena in Greece (the fact that the watch is all over my Instagram feed a year later doesn’t feel like a coincidence). Last month, during the Super Bowl halftime show in which she teased her baby bump, she wore a scarlet Jacob & Co. Brilliant Skeleton Northern Lights. And this week, Rihanna wore a completely different watch, the Rolex Day-Date, while out in Los Angeles with A$AP Rocky.
The Day-Date has never looked cooler—an effect Rihanna has on most of the clothing and accessories she wears. Most famously associated with presidents like Lyndon Johnson, the Day-Date clearly benefits from Rihanna’s edge. Rather than sliding it under a suit, she shows it off alongside her tattoos and the bump poking out from underneath her Loewe crop top.
Stainless steel sport watches have become all-occasion pieces, pulled from everyday wear into formal dress. Rihanna makes a good argument that we should actually be doing the opposite: wearing dress watches while running errands.
Rolex is Rihanna’s brand of choice, and she’s a fan of the Day-Date in particular. This model, which has a gold case and champagne dial, appears to be a piece she has owned for years. There are photos of her courtside at NBA games wearing a similar-looking watch. Of course, Rihanna can afford to stack up as many Day-Dates as she likes. She also owns a rare version in pink gold, which is made especially unique by its “Oyster” bracelet. (The Day-Date is so associated with its standard “President” bracelet that almost everyone knows the watch by that nickname.)
Kaluuya’s watch combines two elements that never miss. First is Vacheron Constantin, which has never done a red carpet attendee wrong (see last week’s Oscars for proof of that). The second is the chronograph with a reverse-panda layout, meaning a black dial with white subdials. Collectors seek out vintage watches with this same layout, and many modern pieces, like this Overseas, have adopted the style. Vacheron is known for its dressier watches, but it does sporty ones like this just as well.
The most important words spoken during Aaron Rodgers’ interview with Pat McAfee this week? “I have one ring and one watch.” That one watch is the Zenith Chronomaster Sport with a white dial and a trademark trio of multi-colored subdials. It’s good to see this particular watch on Rodgers’ wrist, because he told GQ’s Yang-Yi Goh that he’d lost it after the Packers went to London to play the New York Giants last season. “I searched all the places I thought it could be—so I’m going to have to re-search my house when I get back,” Rodgers said. “That’s usually my everyday watch.”
Doncic’s Audemars Piguet is the type of watch that’s rarely seen IRL, but appears to be standard-issue NBA gear. This is actually Doncic’s third variation of the Royal Oak, which he owns in gold-on-gold and white gold with a salmon-colored dial. Somehow, the white-gold blue-dial version he wore this week is the most modest of the bunch. Doncic is currently trying to come back from injury and help the Mavericks secure a playoff spot, which might explain the new timepiece. When I’m sick, I also scroll through webshops looking for a new watch to buy as a little pick-me-up.
New Miami Dolphin and legendary shit talker Jalen Ramsey introduced himself to his new fan base wearing a Hublot Spirit of Big Bang. This is a shit-talking watch: chunky, bold, not hiding from anyone. And it isn’t even the brashest version of the Big Bang, which comes in transparent yellow, orange, purple sapphire, and—most intimidating of all—all-black ceramic.