John Mulaney’s Watch Is From the Industry’s Most Legendary Designer

By now, it’s well established that John Mulaney is “one of us:” A true watch guy with as thoughtful a collection as anyone out there. An owner of a real-deal vintage Rolex Air-King from 1982 (a gift from his wife Olivia Munn upon the birth of their son), a vintage Patek Philippe Calatrava (yet another gift from Munn), and plenty of more modern fare, he’s deep enough down the rabbit hole that, he joked in an interview with GQ last year, his “Google News serves up watch stories as if they are the third or fourth biggest thing happening in the world sometimes.” (Wait, they’re not?)

Well, Mulaney may have outdone himself this time: At the Your Friends & Neighbors premier in New York last week, the world’s most dapper comedian rocked the Gérald Genta Minute Repeater, a 320,000 CHF (roughly $400,000!) wristwatch fashioned from yellow gold and onyx that audibly chimes the time on demand. (There’s an app that will do this for free—but this will not land you on the pages of GQ.) Released at Geneva Watch Days last August, it measures 40mm in diameter and just 9.6mm tall in a cushion-shaped case, with a black leather strap attached to articulating lugs, an onyx cabochon crown, and a stepped bezel that gives it a distinctive vintage vibe.

This watch’s elegant face betrays the true complexity going on underneath. The black onyx dial’s details—simply applied indices, thin gold pencil handset, and modified white railroad minute track all contrive to make it look, well, basic—but a discrete slider on the left-hand case activates the internal repeater mechanism, in which a set of miniature black-polished steel hammers strike a circular gong within the watch case to signal the time upon demand via two distinct tones.

This is all courtesy of the Calibre GG-002, a hand-wound movement developed by La Fabrique du Temps, the brilliant movement maker behind the dials of Louis Vuitton’s haute horlogerie-brand watches. (The Gérald Genta brand is owned by LV.) Ticking away at 3 Hz and boasting an 80-hour power reserve, the movement is full, of course, of high-end finishing: hand beveling, snailing, black polishing, and Côtes de Genève abound, and the entire thing is visible via a sapphire caseback.