Axl Rose Wears One of Patek Philippe’s Most Special Watches

John Mayer in Audemars Piguet. at the Sphere; Leonardo DiCaprio in Rolex at the U.S. Open; Timothée Chalamet in Cartier on a red carpet—all these are squares on my standard horological Bingo card. What was not on there this week? Axl Rose in Patek at the F1 Grand Prix of Hungary.

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What makes Rose’s watch so spectacular? We have to head all the way back to 1941 to get the full picture. Eighty-four years ago, Patek released the world’s first serially produced perpetual calendar, the ref. 1518. For many decades, Patek was the only watchmaker in the world capable of making such a watch, leaving other brands to eat its dust. Patek’s been slowly evolving and perfecting its perpetual calendar models through a series of models that are all historic and important in their own right. After the ref. 1518 came the beloved ref. 2499 in 1951, which was itself succeeded by a series of more advanced perpetual calendar chronos. The ref. 5271 is the modern equivalent of the 1518, offering not only a mechanical chronograph, but also a calendar that won’t need manual adjustment for years on end. (If kept wound, that is.) Part of the brand’s Grand Complications collection, it’s available in several different gem-set guises and also as the ref. 5720, which ditches the stones and comes, in one iteration, with a matching bracelet in rose gold.

Guns N’ Roses singer Rose rocked the modern Patek Philippe ref. 5271P-010, a perpetual calendar chronograph with a diamond-set bezel and lugs at the Oracle Red Bull Racing garage. The black dial set within its 41-mm confines conveys a wealth of information via an outer tachymeter scale, displays for the day and month, a 30-minute counter, a moonphase/date indicator, a running seconds register, a leap year indicator, and a day/night indicator. (If that’s not enough calendar info for you, it may be time to pull the trigger on that Apple Watch.) The hand-wound cal. CH 29-535 PS Q movement, meanwhile, boasts 456 components, a 4 Hz beat rate, and the type of high-end finishing that one expects from its august maker.

Rose is a noted watch collector, having collaborated with HYT and worn the likes of Breitling, Audemars Piguet, Richard Mille, and others. HYT, with its futuristic design and oversized cases, seems like the type of watch that the front man for one of rock n’ roll’s biggest-ever bands would wear. The Royal Oak Offshore, or anything Richard Mille, is also very much Rose’s style. That makes the Patek 5271P, with its restrained, classically inspired designs—with the exception of the platinum case and 81 baguette-cut diamonds—is actually more of the black sheep in his collection.

But a love for horology rarely manifests itself with a single-minded collection full of similar-looking watches. Cool watches are simply cool watches, and most of us—rock stars included—have a wide-ranging rotation. Now, to be fair, our collections don’t generally include a Patek Philippe perpetual calendar dripping in diamonds, but, hey—if you got it, flaunt it!

Lionel Messi’s Patek Phillipe Cubitus

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A dedicated watch guy and Patek collector, it’s little surprise to find Lionel Messi in a Cubitus, the brand’s first new collection in nearly a quarter century. The soccer legend wore the ref. 7128/1R-001, one of the downsized references that debuted this year at Watches and Wonders Geneva. Measuring 40 mm wide and just 8.5 mm tall in rose gold, its square body is joined by a cool sunburst brown dial with horizontal embossing, applied rose gold indices, a luminous baton handset, and a date window at 3 o’clock. With its thin automatic movement and integrated bracelet, it slots right into Patek’s luxury sports watch collections beside the famed Nautilus and Aquanaut lines.

Bowen Yang’s Cartier Tanks

Bowen Yang appeared Watch What Happens Love with Andy Cohen this week in not one, but two Cartier Tank Louis watches. Stacking the Tanks in the manner of the hip and the fashionable, he rocked Mini and Large models of the Parisian brand’s famous WWI-era dress watch, both in 18K yellow gold and fitted to black leather straps. The only question—beyond whether or not this sartorial masterstroke will penetrate the broader horological zeitgeist—is whether each was set to a separate time zone, and what these were. Cartier watches are especially stackable. Before Yang, Timothée Chalamet wore two mini Tanks at once.

Chris Pratt’s Cartier Santos de Cartier

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Chris Pratt looked dapper on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in a great brown suit and a Large-model Santos de Cartier in two-tone steel and gold. Based upon the classic pilot’s watch that Louis Cartier made for Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont at the turn of the 20th century, the Santos de Cartier features an unusual square-shaped case and dial with a riveted bezel, a matching bracelet, and a cool dial in a grey sunray pattern with applied Roman indices, an inner railroad minute track, a date window, and steel sword hands. As is the case with many of the Large-sized Cartier watches, it’s powered by a mechanical movement, in this case the automatically-wound cal. 1847 MC.

Joe Jonas’s Hublot “Service” Watch

Courtesy of Hublot

Courtesy of Hublot

The most interesting watch of the week might be one that was never intended for commercial release. In the 1990s, the Hublot “service” watch was given to clients whose Hublot timepieces were in for service so that they wouldn’t be without a timepiece. (The dial actually says “SERVICE” in large white printing above the Hublot logo.) Joe Jonas managed to source one of these cool pieces and wore it in the music video for his new song I Can’t Lose. Housed in a 36-mm case and powered by a quartz movement, this is the loaner vehicle of the horological world—and it’s pretty darn cool, if you ask us.