Timothée Chalamet invests in independent Danish watchmaker Urban Jürgensen
No longer the Bleu de Chanel ambassador, the actor has stepped into a new role in the watch world
WHEN CHANEL announced that a new ambassador for Bleu de Chanel was on the way, it left the world thinking – what happened to Timothée Chalamet? While he’s been enjoying the Miami sun in his Puma Speedcats, fans have been speculating what he’s been up to away from the screen (and the sea).
Today, independent Danish watchmaker Urban Jürgensen revealed that the Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme star has joined its team as an official partner and investor, taking a minority equity stake. However, he’s also going to have a creative input in the brand, named as a ‘creative advisor’.
Yes, he’s been a brand ambassador in the past, but this marks the first time Chalamet has stepped into a more hands-on partnership. And it seems like he knows his stuff (his watch collection is wild and wide-ranging). Urban Jürgensen has explained that their relationship began when the actor approached them as a watch enthusiast with a budding interest in independent watchmaking. In fact, he sported the brand’s UJ-2 at New York Film Festival last year most of the recent awards season.
Chalamet at the BAFTAs wearing a Chalamet’s Urban Jürgensen UJ-2
The UJ2 became a fixture on Chalamet’s wrist during awards season, a nice indicator of a burgeoning partnership?
The partnership seems to have arrived at the perfect time, as the watch industry increasingly seeks to bring in a younger, mainstream audience to get out of its slump. Celebrity ambassadors are no new phen0menon: Ryan Gosling reps TAG Heuer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is one of many faces of OMEGA, and, perhaps most famously, Leonardo DiCaprio is one of Rolex’s biggest ambassadors. However, bringing a young millennial face to an independent watchmaker in a creative and financial role (that isn’t just for marketing purposes) does signal a potential shift.
If this is anything to go by, the watchmaking industry might need to move away from celebrity ambassadorship where a star is just the ‘face’ of a brand or campaign if brands want to bring in bigger, younger, and more mainstream audiences. It could be a one-off, but it could also be another way that watchmakers signal that their ambassadors are enthusiasts, not just a pretty face.
This article first appeared on Esquire UK
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