For more insider watch coverage, get Box + Papers, GQ’s newsletter devoted to the watch world, sent to your inbox every Thursday. Sign up here.
Here is a short list of things that are incredibly hot in the watch world right now (or always have been):
- The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
- Ceramic, the hard-wearing scratch-proof material, that brands like AP and Hublot frequently use to make pieces in bright showstopping colors
- “Panda” dials (meaning a white dial with black sub registers)
Until now, however, there hasn’t been a watch that combined this holy trinity into one single piece. That all changed when Ed Sheeran wore this Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar at the Country Music Awards this week.
A representative for AP confirms this is a unique Royal Oak made specifically for Sheeran. The singer’s watch is inspired by one of the brand’s existing perpetual calendars, which is also made out of ceramic but with a navy dial. Sheeran’s version is really striking, with a full snow-white dial and a quartet of intense black subdials. Of course, it’s a watch only a super-collector like Sheeran—who moonlights as a Hodinkee contributor—would have.
Sheeran is a fan of collecting and producing unique watches like this one. He owns another custom Royal Oak: a black-and-gold chronograph with an eight-point star at 12 o’clock to symbolize August (the eighth month), when his daughter was born. He also wears a custom-made, black-and-red, Darth Maul-looking Nautilus with his initials on it. Sheeran loves unique pieces so much, he teamed up with Tudor to produce a series of watches for the crew who worked on his Divide tour. Still, this new white-and-black AP might be the best of the bunch.
Last year, AP celebrated the 50th anniversary of its flagship Royal Oak. The brand spun the watch out in a wide range of special-edition flavors to commemorate the occasion. The smoked green dial might not be the flashiest in the collection—which also included full yellow-gold tourbillon pieces and skeleton dials—but celebrities like Messi have gravitated toward it since its release.
Lil Nas X’s commitment to the bit is admirable. After he danced with the devil—literally—in his video for “Montero” and then released a pair of satanic Nikes (allegedly) injected with a drop of human blood, he is now bringing everyone’s (least?) favorite keeper of the underworld into his watch collection, too. Rather than the more obvious Bulova Devil Diver (a terrific watch!), the rapper opted for this Roget Dubuis with more subtle ties to Satan. “The Excalibur Spider Carbon 45MM is valued at $666,000,” a statement from the brand read. “The number of the beast.”
.jpg)
The Tiffany-blue Nautilus is like Where’s Waldo?: You never know where you’re going to spot it, but it’s always exciting when you do. It was a pretty safe bet the watch would appear at the F1 race in Miami, but who would have guessed it would be on the wrist of fashion designer Hilfiger? This is the hype watch to end all hype watches. When it was first released, it sold at auction for $5.6 million. Clearly, there isn’t a watch collector that can resist this piece: it’s attracted Leonardo DiCaprio, architect Daniel Abraham, and now Hilfiger.
“I just like weird watches,” Park told GQ at the Gold Gala. This is certainly a funny one: inspired by the shape of those domes (the cloche) used to cover food. This watch was released through Cartier’s Privé collection, which exhumes iconic designs from the brand’s archives.