Jason Momoa’s Watch Stole the Show at The Wrecking Crew Premiere

While Jason Momoa has been spotted in the usual horological suspects—Rolex Daytona, Cartier Tank, etc.—some more unusual choices have also graced his wrist. Being a serious Leica camera fan, he’s rocked the gold ZM1, for example—a watch that doesn’t get much love from the mainstream celebrity watch-wearing community. Now, however, even that timepiece seems pedestrian next to the rare gem he strapped on for the UK premiere of his new film The Wrecking Crew.

Witness Momoa in all his pink corduroy-clad glory—astride a black Harley, no less—and wearing a vintage Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, perhaps his hardest-hitting timepiece yet. The Fifty Fathoms, after all, was one of the first dive watches produced at a commercial scale in the early 1950s alongside the Rolex Submariner and the Zodiac Sea-Wolf. But that’s not all, you see. The Fifty Fathoms was also a widely-issued military watch, with variants used by France’s Marine Nationale, Germany’s Bundeswehr, the U.S. Navy, and others. In fact, it was Captain Bob Maloubier, a French veteran of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War, who helped design the watch to military specifications for combat divers.

The particular version that Momoa wore is ultra-rare, slightly confusing, and wildly cool: Dubbed a Fifty Fathoms ‘Demo’ Milspec 1, it was actually not a military-issued version of the watch despite the “Milspec” nomenclature featured on the dial. The story is that a handful of these pieces were sold to the civilian market via Abercrombie & Fitch (then a prominent American outdoor outfitter) in the 1960s and 1970s with several modifications: The case was upgraded to a bead-blasted, two-piece design while the Bakelite bezel was swapped for a fully hashed version, the crown was made to screw down, and the watch’s movement was swapped out for a newer caliber. And that little yellow-orange circle above 6 o’clock? That’s a moisture indicator whose color would change if water entered the case, alerting its wearer to take it in for service ASAP.

Advertised via Abercrombie & Fitch as “Demolition” watches, these wildly rare Fifty Fathoms pieces don’t trade hands often—indeed, it’s the type of watch that Momoa would either have been offered by a top dealer, or sought out himself, thanks to its synergy with the title of his newest film (and, of course, its horological clout). Either way, this is also one of the rare instances in which the civilian version of a milspec watch may actually be cooler than the military-issued variant.

Rian Johnson’s Omega Speedmaster