Robert Pattinson flashed a $2 Million Jaeger-LeCoultre to the Venice Film Festival
The newly-minted brand ambassador pulled out the big guns on the red carpet
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IT’S BEEN barely 72 hours since Robert Pattinson was announced as the new ambassador for watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre and already the British actor is flexing some Herculean-level watch muscle on his wrist.
At the Venice International Film Festival for the premiere of his new film, Primetime, Pattinson walked the red carpet in a suitably cool pinstriped Dior suit (Jonathan Anderson, can you do no wrong?). The flourish was on the left wrist: a diamond-set Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 184, one of only five ever made in this specification.
Even for someone with the clout that Pattinson has, it’s an unusually fast turnaround between a partnership announcement and a red carpet appearance in the manufacture’s most complicated watch.
The Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 184sits at the top of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Hybris Artistica line, first unveiled in 2019 as a showcase for what its watchmakers in the Vallée de Joux can build when nobody puts a ceiling on the brief. Inside the 43mm platinum case: a bi-axial Gyrotourbillon weighing less than half a gram, a perpetual calendar with a jumping date display alongside day, month and year indications, and a minute repeater that chimes the full Westminster melody through trebuchet hammers and crystal gongs.
The case and bezel carry 260 baguette-cut diamonds, totalling 8.72 carats, set against an open caseback and a black sapphire dial. Wind it by hand and the power reserve runs to 50 hours. Official retail price is €1,130,000, (AUD2.04M) excluding tax, which puts the widely reported “close to $1 million” figure on the conservative side.
Venice wasn’t his rodeo wearing one of the most impressive Jaeger-LeCoultre’s. The relationship began at this year’s Oscars, where he sported a then-unreleased Master Control Chronometre Perpetual Calendar, a watch that reportedly caught the attention of more than a few fellow nominees at the after-party. This was his first appearance in one of the manufacture’s grand complications since the ambassadorship became official. The gap between an unreleased perpetual calendar and a diamond-set minute repeater with a bi-axial tourbillon is considerable, and Pattinson closed it in a single red carpet appearance.
Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim and inspired by journalist Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator, sees Pattinson play a television journalist loosely modelled on Hansen. The film received a nine-minute standing ovation at its premiere. Think he timed it on the watch?
Related:
Robert Pattinson’s ‘Primetime’ is set to be the year’s most unlikely menswear film
