What is the look of success? The going trend may be the understatement of quiet luxury, but for the last few decades hip-hop artists have had the boldest, most compelling answer. Outsized, ostentatious overstatement was the name of the game. The bigger a gold watch, a curb chain or a ring was, the quicker, louder and clearer it said ‘success’. Bling had to be big and bold.
But now that a whole generation of entertainers have established themselves as pop culture icons, genre-defining artists and business moguls, so too have their tastes evolved. It’s most apparent in the field of watches, which for a long time has been the only form of jewellery for men. A reigning undercurrent now is a taste for connoisseurship instead of outright flamboyance.
Complicating things
Dubbed the greatest rapper of all time by Billboard, Jay-Z is no stranger to fancy timepieces. The brand he’s most closely associated with is also one that he helped raise the profile of. It’s said that Audemars Piguet and its former CEO François-Henry Bennahmias introduced the rapper to the world of high watchmaking. Consider that seed fruitfully sowed. In 2006, the Swiss brand broke new ground by releasing a limited-edition Royal Oak Offshore with Jay-Z to celebrate his 10th year in music.
Now, Jay-Z’s taste in timepieces appears to skew towards the highly complicated. One of the most notable watches he’s been seen wearing is the Patek Philippe Ref. 6300, nicknamed Grandmaster Chime, one of the august house’s most complicated wristwatch ever made. It has a grand total of 20 complications spread across two dials on a swivelling double-sided case.
As for contemporary Audemars Piguets that Jay-Z wears these days? Try Royal Oak QPs (quantième perpetual), which are mechanical complications that tell the day, date and phase of the moon in addition to time.
Maverick style
Another hip-hop artist who has transcended entertainment to become a far larger figure in pop culture and business is Pharrell Williams. You likely think of him for his music, but today Williams occupies one of the most powerful seats in the fashion industry as the creative director of menswear at Louis Vuitton.
The artist’s eclectic, insouciant sense of style carries over to his choice of watches. One high-end brand that he’s an ardent fan of is the maverick Richard Mille, which makes watches that are nicknamed the ‘billionaire’s handshake’. The brand’s design aesthetic can be polarising, but the siren song of Richard Mille that’s heard by connoisseurs is one of the brand’s technical wizardry.
The model that Williams has been seen wearing a lot recently is an astounding technological coup. The RM UP-01 Ferrari, a co-branded design with the Formula 1 racing team, takes a simple idea to the extreme: how thin can you make a watch? The answer is an astounding 1.75 millimetres. For reference: the international standard thickness for a toothpick is 2 millimetres. The watch is designed, despite its absurdly lithe profile, to withstand the extreme G-forces and accelerations of Formula 1. The highest recorded in the sport are around 6.5 Gs; Richard Mille has designed its skinny slab of horology to take on over 5,000.
Everywhere but the wrist
Watches may have been the domain of men, but that looks set to change. In the last year, women celebrities have been rocking up to red carpets and public appearances wearing watches in fresh, novel ways.
The star who kicked this off is almost certainly Rihanna. In June last year, at Williams’s debut runway show for Louis Vuitton, the beauty mogul and singer wore a fully gem-set, tourbillon-equipped custom watch by Jacob & Co around her neck as a choker. Later in November, she was seen at the Las Vegas F1 Grand Prix wearing another Jacob & Co diamond-set timepiece as an anklet.
An aside: Rihanna’s choice of jeweller and watchmaker is serendipitous. Jacob Arabo, the founder of Jacob & Co, built his name in the ’90s and 2000s as the go-to guy for artists and entertainers seeking one-of-a-kind, larger-than-life bling. The rapper Notorious BIG gave him the nickname of ‘Jacob the jeweller’, and his legend is cemented in the lyrics of the rappers who shop at Jacob & Co.
Shortly after Rihanna came Emma Chamberlain, who attended a Miu Miu fashion show wearing a Cartier Baignoire around her neck at precisely the moment when interest in the oval model was surging. And at the Grammy Awards this year, the movement got an endorsement by a superstar who, until then, had nearly no reputation for an interest in watches. Taylor Swift, dressed in glamorous Schiaparelli, wore ropes of Lorraine Schwartz diamond necklaces. The crowning jewel: a triple-strand choker of black diamonds with an octagonal vintage watch as its centrepiece.
This article was originally published in the April ‘Pop’ issue of Vogue Singapore, available online and on newsstands now.
