Luke Combs’ Surreal Cartier Tank Proves That He’s an A1 Collector
Luke Combs has quietly been assembling a grade-A watch collection. Over the past few years, the singer has worn everything from classic luxury staples, like his Rolex GMT-Master II, to stranger, more insider-y fare, including an A. Lange & Söhne. His latest choice might be the boldest yet: an underrated variant of one of Cartier’s most eccentric designs, the Tank Folle.
While everyone knows the melted dimensions of the Crash, the Folle receives much less fanfare. Combs’s Cartier made its debut in 2012, so it’s a much more recent invention than the ’60s-era Crash. But the origin of the Folle might be even more compelling. Whereas the Crash riffs on the bathtub-shaped Bangoire, the Folle goes right to one of the most iconic watches ever made in the Tank. It feels slightly more dangerous to mutate the shape of a load-bearing piece like this. The result is wonderfully bizarre. The Tank’s normally straight brancards twist and warp into an almost liquid shape, as if the watch is slowly sliding off the wrist.
Combs’s variant is even more unusual than most examples of the Folle. The watch on the red carpet for the Time100 Gala on Thursday features an 18k white-gold case set with diamonds and a lacquer dial with Cartier’s signature Roman numerals. Powered by the manually wound Cartier calibre 8970 MC, the model was limited to just 200 pieces worldwide—placing it firmly in the category of watches that most collectors will only ever encounter in an auction catalogue or the back pages of a dealer’s inventory. It’s not just rare; it’s the sort of deep-cut Cartier reference that signals serious enthusiasm for the brand’s stranger historical shapes.
That interest comes at a moment when Cartier is enjoying an enormous surge in relevance among collectors. Long pigeonholed as a jeweler that happened to make watches, the house has spent the past decade reminding the world that it is also one of the most important design-driven watchmakers in history. The strategy has worked. Today, Cartier sits firmly as the second-largest watch brand in the world by revenue, trailing only Rolex and generating billions annually in sales. Alongside staples like the Tank and Santos, the market has become increasingly fascinated with Cartier’s oddball “shaped” watches, like the Crash, Baignoire, and other sculptural designs that feel more like wearable art than traditional timepieces.
Which makes the Tank Folle an especially intriguing pick for Combs. When the singer first began appearing in these pages, his choices leaned toward the classics—solid, widely loved watches that suggested a budding enthusiast. Recently, though, the picks have grown more adventurous. In past sightings, he’s worn everything from a colorful Rolex sports watch to elegant vintage-leaning pieces from Cartier itself, gradually moving deeper into the sort of territory that seasoned collectors tend to explore.
