THE JOURNAL
A little over 60 years ago, Rolex was looking to make a statement. So it turned to the watch design legend Mr Gérald Genta to shake things up. The result was a plain, two-hand watch with an asymmetric pentagon case on a minimalist link band – with the first synthetic crystal glass. It was also the heaviest gold watch then commercially available. It was called, appropriately, the King Midas. It would prove the choice of the other king, Mr Elvis Presley, as well as Mr John Wayne and the Bond villain Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun.
It would also announce the rebirth of the yellow-gold watch as something both fashionable – a step on from the more classical style of upscale watch that had long used soft and workable gold as its go-to material – but also desirable. Traditionally, a gold watch was what one was given upon retirement by a grateful employer, a convention started in the 1940s by Pepsi Co, and sometimes to mark a major promotion. Becoming the US president has been marked with the precious metal since 1951, when Rolex gave President Dwight Eisenhower, the then five-star general, a gold Datejust.
The other side of the coin, it would also kick-start what over time would become the less appealing associations for the yellow-gold watch. It is a kind of wearable insurance (see how Mr Michael Douglas trades his gold watch to get around visa restrictions in The Game) perhaps ideally suited to uncertain times but underscoring its value by literal weight. It’s also a bit flashy; the choice of traders – both street-market and financial – who made it good in the 1980s and wanted to show it.
“You see this watch? You see this watch I’m wearing?” asks the brash salesman, played by Mr Alec Baldwin, of his underlings in Glengarry Glen Ross. “This watch costs more than your car.” It’s a big yellow-gold watch, of course.
Now the gold watch is making a return, as models from makers as diverse as Gerald Charles and Panerai, Bell & Ross, Cartier and Gucci suggest. “I’m finding myself going back to a gold watch when I never thought I would,” says Mr Edouard Meylan, CEO of H. Moser & Cie. “Gold just had that negative, nouveau-riche image. Now I think gold is being seen as tasteful, even avant-garde, again. Historically, gold is taking us back to the basics of watchmaking, now translated through modern design.”
“Steel has become such a dominant material in watchmaking that gold suddenly looks new and cool again”
Gold’s resurgence might be put down to three things. First, there’s the growing interest in vintage watches, many of which are yellow gold, so our eyes have been opened to the possibility of the metal as an option again. Then, over the past two decades, more understated, more accessible, red, rose and pink golds have been widely used in watchmaking, proving a kind of prelude to the bolder, more conspicuous yellow stuff.
Lastly, steel has become such a dominant material in watchmaking – and commanding an escalating premium – that, as Meylan puts it, “gold suddenly looks new and cool again”.
In part, that’s because you won’t see so much of it. Gold is still relatively exclusive, and it’s really only an option for the bigger brands. Meylan also points out that gold can be hard to work with, and specialist tooling and manufacturing processes are required. A brand also needs to have a healthy cash flow to bankroll making watches in gold, especially against the metal’s ever-fluctuating market price – this May, gold hit a record high. Back in the 1960s, when the King Midas was launched, gold was heading towards its lowest price in a century.
One reason 18k gold – about 75 per cent pure – is about as premium as watch gold gets now is that alloys have been added to make it so much harder than the 24k kind, which is prone to dents. But over the past 20 years, the bigger brands have also taken steps to make gold even more exclusive and functional, either by creating alloys to give their own distinctive shades of gold, or, as the likes of Rolex and Hublot have done, to make gold more resistant to oxidisation, fading or scratching.
“One thing that I think has always been appreciated about gold is that it ages beautifully”
Bring all that on, says Mr George Bamford of Bamford Watch Department, which has produced a series of limited-edition TAG Heuer Carreras in 18k yellow gold. For him, gold appeals once more because it’s a “living”, somehow more human material.
“One thing that I think has always been appreciated about gold is that it ages beautifully,” Bamford says. “The more scratched up it gets, the more personality it has.”
What’s more, gold is optimistic and upbeat, especially for the summer: more deep tan in Capri than braces on the trading floor. “Yellow gold just gives such an amazing warmth to a watch case in the way that’s very hard to achieve with steel,” Bamford says. “It’s that lovely, rich honey colour. I mean, wow!”