Michael B. Jordan’s Audemars Piguet Is the Next Big Thing In Watches
The new Audemars Piguet in town, is actually very old. After cycling through distinctively shaped designs like the Cartier Crash and the stone-dial craze fueled by old-school Piaget, the next big thing in watches looks a lot like the vintage piece on Michael B. Jordan’s wrist this week.
For the 35th Annual Gotham Film Awards this week in New York, Jordan wore a very pretty gold Audemars Piguet. The vintage watch features a jangly gold bracelet, octagonal case, diamond-studded and champagne-toned dial, and those tell-tale protrusions along the bezel and bracelet edge that make it look like a piece of bamboo. Those features point to a series of watches made by AP in the ‘80s and ‘90s that have transcended their highly idiosyncratic, somewhat quirky design inspo to become a veritable horological tour de force, taking over wrist real estate from classic Cartier and stone-dial Piaget to adorn the arms of folks like Jacob Elordi, Romeo Beckham, and now, MBJ.
We have to go, as we so often do, back to the 1980s, as the Quartz Crisis was still making itself felt in Switzerland. Top firms such as AP were forced to double down on their creativity in order to usurp market share away from the increasingly affordable (and highly accurate) quartz watch. Top Swiss brands like AP had more than a few ways to earn their keep, though. They focused on the craftsmanship of its mechanical movements and hired star designers to invent a new type of sports watch hyping the use of stainless steel. During this era, the Swiss houses also focused more on delivering top-end design that was meant to stamp the wearer immediately as well-heeled. An early model to emerge from that design brief was the ref. 5403 “Cobra,” an integrated-bracelet watch designed by Gérald Genta, who was also responsible for the AP Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus.
Like other watches from that era that were marketed through their massive pricetags—remember when Patek promoted the Nautilus as “one of the world’s costliest watches”—the Bamboo followed the same line of thinking. Ads for the watch touted this as a piece for folks with serious purchasing power. “Successful and influential, you also stand alone in search of the same deliberate exclusivity that sets you apart from the crowd,” and, with unabashed confidence in its own wares, “It always costs more to cultivate a certain style.” Looking at a Bamboo, the lineage from the Cobra is easily discernible, but AP broke away from the round mold of the aforementioned ref. 5403 to create something arguably more unique.
There are myriad references, all tweaked subtly, but each of these watches smack of 1980s excess. The qualities that define watches like MBJ’s are lots of gold, diamonds, and glittery surfaces. With their thin cases and smaller diameters, they certainly don’t bring the same physical presence of the beefier steel sports pieces, like the Royal Oak, that debuted alongside. But the glitzy aesthetics of these Bamboo-style APs make them stand out from the crowd, and their insidery, offbeat designs are perfect fodder forcelebrities looking for the next hot thing.
