Welcome toWatches of the Week, where we'll track the rarest, wildest, and most covetable watches spotted on celebrities.
Most basketball fans watching the NBA 75 ceremony last weekend were excited to
see Michael Jordan socializing with his peers—er, rivals—and his heir apparent, LeBron James. Meanwhile, watch fanatics were most interested in what was on the G.O.A.T.’s wrist—the freaky, futuristic brand Urwerk, which he’s also worn to a previous All-Star game. This is a special UR-220 customized for Jordan with a couple of nice touches. The accents, which are typically yellow or green like the one shown above, have been remade in Chicago Bulls red, and the Roman numerals XXIII (Jordan wore 23) are also etched into the watch in gold.
Jordan has a soft spot for Urwerk’s space-age watches—he owns a UR-103, the UR-202, and the UR-202S. Science fiction is baked into the Swiss brand: The design of Urwerk’s very first watch was inspired by Han Solo’s trusty Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. When Marvel needed a watch that would go with an Iron Man suit, Urwerk was called in. Urwerk cofounder Felix Baumgartner is less interested in telling wearers the exact time than he is making them “conscious about their time,” he told me in 2020. The first Urwerk watch didn’t even bother to display the minutes. “Real luxury is to have time,” Baumgartner says. “And, actually, to not even to know the time by the second, to just have your own feel of time.” Based on the luxuriousness of Jordan’s customized UR-220, it seems no one has more time than him.
Also this week, Robert Pattinson wears a watch fit for Bruce Wayne, and Guy Fieri’s taste in watches is similar to his taste in food.
Robert Pattinson’s Cartier Tank Must
Robert Pattinson has been on an absolute tear sartorially. He's mostly mined the ‘90s for baggy, oversized suits, big coats, and chunky silver jewelry, but this watch goes even further back than that. The Cartier Tank Must line originally debuted in the ‘70s as a response to the quartz crisis, when more affordable watches flooded the market and captured customers’ hearts. Production of the line stopped in the ‘90s but Cartier recently brought Must back in a couple of rich hues: forest green, bottom-of-the-ocean blue, and burgundy. The watches have been a crowd pleaser and Pattinson is apparently a fan, too. Credit to watch writer Nick Gould for the spot.
Steph Curry’s Patek Philippe Nautilus
OK, Steph! Looks like Curry’s watch game—for a while there he wore a $600 Movado—is finally catching up to his game-game. Curry’s been pulling out the big guns as of late, like an indestructible Panerai and skeletonized Cartier. Yet his collection wouldn’t be complete without the Patek Philippe Nautilus, one of the most important boxes to check for an elite athlete. Curry bypassed the basic model and went straight for the reference 5740 with a perpetual calendar. This is the first Nautilus equipped with what Patek calls a “grand complication.” One possible explanation for the surge in Curry’s watch collection? Maybe his teammate Draymond Green, who has been out with an injury for a few weeks and is a ferocious watch collector, has been maximizing his time on the bench to talk watches.
Not an exact match, but a watch that could be under all Fieri's ice
Guy Fieri’s custom Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore
Guy Fieri is a man of excess: he’ll take any spice, seasoning, or hot sauce on hand. His slather-happy philosophy apparently also carries over to watches. This Royal Oak Offshore is set with so many diamonds it’s impossible to tell what the exact model is underneath all that ice. Fieri took this piece straight to Flavortown.
Spike Lee’s Rolex Cosmograph Daytona
This week’s watch roundup has featured plenty of firsts: the first grand-complication Nautilus, the first Urwerk customized by a G.O.A.T., the first official watch of Flavortown. Now, with Spike Lee’s Rolex, we have another one. This was the first Daytona fitted with a rubber strap (Oysterflex, in Rolex parlance) when it was released in 2017. Sure, that doesn’t sound hugely exciting, but consider how the Crown makes changes in slow motion. The Oysterflex accentuates everything that makes the Daytona great—the watch world’s favorite modern sports watch got even sportier and moderner.