New York City-based auction house Fortuna hosts the second installment of the “Important Watches” auction following a successful sale in June. Another sampling of rare timepieces will be up for grabs during the September 27 event. Collectors’ pieces from Patek Philippe, Breguet, Audemars Piguet, Rolex, and more will go to the highest bidder, with starting prices ranging from $500 to $110,000.
Patek Philippe Nautilus with Date Moonphase Complications
The crown jewel of the auction—a rare, fresh-to-market Rolex “Paul Newman” Daytona—carries the highest starting bid at $110,000. And rightly so. The early 70s piece comes to the auction in great condition from its original owner. Other highlights include highly sought after vintage and contemporary pieces from Patek Philippe: a “Nautilus” Ref. 5712/1A (with box and papers) and an incredibly well-preserved first-series Ref. 2526 will be up for grabs. And not to be overlooked are a Gerald Genta “Success” Octagon Chronograph, a circa 1973 Rolex Explorer II Ref. 1655, and an impressive selection women’s pieces from Cartier, Chanel, and Piaget.
Important Watches will take place at 1:00 PM on Thursday, September 27th. Register to bid here.
Gucci hasn’t broken the internet, but it has cracked Instagram. And we can’t get enough.
Photographs by Martin Paar
For its new Instagram campaign, Gucci commissioned British photographer Martin Parr to capture its new watches at nine so-called Gucci Places—sites of brand inspiration, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Maison Assouline in London, and Gucci’s own Florentine garden. As with all of Parr’s work, the photos are hyper-saturated, acerbic, precisely observed. It’s the only luxury watch campaign this year co-starring a stale croissant, a pigeon’s gnarled claw, and a few spots of a tourist’s acne. #TimeToParr is as visually successful as it is ambitious. Which is saying something.
ITALY. Gucci. Time to Parr. 2018.
The collaboration between Gucci, a brand that’s as Italian as bus strike, and Martin Parr, documentarian of British kitsch and quirk, was not self-evident. It owes its existence to one Roman Anglophile: Alessandro Michele, the visionary, maximally-coiffed creative director of Gucci.
Michele’s love of the British is foundational. His very first collections featured models that looked as if they were honey-dipped then dragged through the Elizabethan, Victorian and Edwardian eras; above the shoulders alone, accessories included ruffled collars, slips of tartan and silk scarves knotted under the neck, a look recognizable to viewers of The Crown. Another dream, realized in 2016, was a Gucci show staged at Westminster Abbey, the sight of all English coronations since William the Conqueror’s ascent in 1066. Cool, Britannia.
ITALY. Gucci. Time to Parr. 2018.
Now we have these Martin Parr pictures, which—not to put too fine a point on it—are about perfect. Timely, technicolor, absurd and charming. From the company that sells four-figure jackets embroidered with the Yankees logo, commissioning the former president of the Magnum photography collective to shoot an Instagram campaign makes a perverse kind of sense. It’s the full glory of high-low.
But there are many British photographers. What bound Michele’s cavalcade of prints, ruffles and horse-bit everything specifically to Martin Parr is a two-part epoxy: one part robust Anglophilia, one part dense, referential, mordant wit. Parr’s work is most often described as anthropological and satirical. What are Michele’s silhouettes, pulled from Renaissance paintings, if not anthropology? What is an interlocked-G Gucci logo the size of a focaccia if not satire?
Rather than flying in a phalanx of models, Parr cast subjects via their proximity to Gucci’s chosen locales and, in the case of one Chatsworth House groundskeeper, for the proximity of the green of his jacket to Gucci’s own trademarked hue. The man, gray and gentle, sweeps the pavement. Peeking from beneath the sleeve of his fleece: a 38mm G-Timeless, its band a perfect match to the worn broom handle.
GB. England. Gucci. Time to Parr. 2018.
Another photo from Chatsworth is a portrait-of-a-portrait: two teens taking a selfie. They’re demure and apple-cheeked. The boy’s phone case,
garish and worn, would give most art directors an aneurysm. But follow his hand down to the wrist and you see the juxtaposition: cheap plastic foregrounding Gucci’s Eryx G-Timeless, sitting as serene and golden as a sphinx.
Across the Atlantic, a different shot shows a woman head to toe in pink: clothes, nails, eyeglasses, jewelry, hairdo, notably taut face. Whatever she’s regarding is out of frame, but it could be one of LACMA’s Rodins—her hand clasps her chin in homage to the sculptor’s “The Thinker.” The watch, Gucci’s Le Marché Des Merveilles, is appropriately Pepto-Bismol, plus serpents, studs, and shoe-leather from one of Shirley Temple’s old Mary Janes.
HONG KONG. TOKYO. LA. NYC. Gucci. Time to Parr. 2018.
Was commissioning Martin Parr, famed for biting meta-portraits of the leisure class, to photograph luxury goods a wise idea? Can such a surfeit of irony—Gucci’s current retro-indulgence plus Parr’s wicked perspective plus The Internet—trick the laws of metaphysics, piercing through layer after layer of critique, parody and burlesque, and end up engendering the glamour that makes a buyer point to a bauble, and say, Mine?
And so one might wonder: Is this #TimetoParr campaign the best Anglo-Italian collaboration since Spaghetti Westerns?
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its partnership with the Mille Miglia, Italy’s famed open-road endurance race, Chopard has introduced a collection of five Mille Miglia Racing Colours watches inspired by cars that competed in the historic race between 1927 and 1940. Each 42 mm chronograph bears a different dial color, a nod to the race’s leading nationalities (Italian, British, German, Belgian and French).
Chopard Mille Miglia Racing Colors – The fiery Rosso Corso red.
Proud of its newly minted partnership with Lamborghini Squadra Corse—the Italian automaker’s motorsports division, responsible for competitions such as the Super Trofeo—Roger Dubuis is touting a new 45 mm Excalibur Aventador
S edition in blue that boasts a degree of complexity familiar to fans of supercars. Powered by the Geneva watchmaker’s
Duotor (double balance wheels) concept, the model features a completely revamped 312-part RD103SQ movement sheathed in a skeletonized Excalibur Spider case.
Roger Dubuis Excalibur Aventador SRoger Dubuis Excalibur Aventador S
Freediving champion Guillaume Néry has explored the depth of the unknown, and in it found the limits of humanity.
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How did you get into freediving? What attracted you to the sport?
I discovered freediving by chance, doing a challenge with a friend on the bus to school. We were just trying to hold our breath the longest. I was 14 years old, and this was an experiment to [find] the limits of my body. That was fascinating to me. Because I was living in Nice, by the Mediterranean Sea, I decided I should try [doing it] underwater. It was much more interesting than just holding my breath on the bus! I fell in love with this feeling of going down deeper and deeper, like I was discovering an unknown planet. Today, the quest of the unknown, the exploration of human limits—these are still my passions. But lately I’ve [used] freediving for reconnecting with my own body, getting this harmony between the body, the mind, and the water. I don’t need to compete or break a record to experience it. Every time I go underwater, it feels like a moment of peace and happiness, whatever the time or the depth. Of course, as an athlete, I like world record attempts or world championship dives. I have prepared for so many hours, days, weeks, months, and you just have one chance to make it perfect. That’s the most challenging part. Freediving is all about relaxation, letting go, but it’s very hard to relax when you know you are about to attempt the deepest dive ever. In the end, the most enjoyable thing is when you can forget about all that, and just focus on the great feeling of gliding in the water.
What benefits does a good diving watch provide while you are underwater?
The watch is the only thing from my life on land that I bring with me into the deep. The watch becomes a link between my aquatic and outside life. The watch is a kind of symbol of the time passing, and when I am underwater on a single breath of air, life is time! I have to trust my body and the watch that [measures] the time I spend underwater. A good diving watch should be big enough so that you can easily read the time, but also not to heavy so that it feels like a part of your body. On top of that, I try to share the passion of the underwater world with the larger world, so aesthetics plays a huge role when people film me or take pictures of my dive. I try to be very careful in my movement underwater, to be graceful as I truly believe it helps the efficiency, and I want to wear the best outfit. The watch needs to have the best design and look that will combine my quest of aestheticism and performance. Today, I have found the watch that meets my expectations.
Do you ever get frightened before, or during, a deep dive?
Freediving is known to be a dangerous sport, but in reality we are doing a very safe activity. The main rule is: never freedive alone. I am always surrounded by my team when I am training or taking part in a competition. But, of course, sometimes you can experience the unexpected, and you have to be trained to deal with unpredictable situations. In 2015, I was trying to break my fifth world record, attempting a dive at -129 meters. The organization made a mistake on the rope measurement, and I dove at -139. It was of course too deep, and I lost consciousness a few meters from the surface [during the ascent]. It could have been very serious. I recovered after few days, because I was in a very good shape. But the deepest dives are not always the most dangerous. The main danger is overconfidence. It’s very important to stay humble and remember that we, as humans, are very vulnerable and small in this world, especially when we are deep down, like a small drop of water lost in the middle of the ocean.
