The watches Timothée Chalamet is making the world fall in love with

Text by Ana Franco.

That Timothée Chalamet is not a man like any other is shown not only by his artistic talent. It is also his stylistic choices. And, above all, his jewellery box. Only he (and perhaps Paul Mescal and Jacob Elordi) is capable of adorning himself with a watch less than 30 mm in diameter without complexes. He is also capable of walking around, as he did at the Berlin International Film Festival (the Berlinale) with a pink piece to match his casual Chrome Hearts hoodie look.

That watch was a steel Ballon Bleu from Cartier, the brand of which the French-American performer is the face of. The instrument was marked by Roman numerals and a crown with a protected blue synthetic spinel cabochon. Also typical of this collection are the blued steel hands in the shape of a sword. This 33 mm pink model can be found in the brand’s catalogue for 6,750 euros with a steel bracelet, although Chalamet used a pink leather strap to fit it.

Who said pink and small watches were just for girls? Chalamet has been proving for months that conventions are there to be broken, helped by a brand, Cartier, which is bringing back to the present the trend (typical of times gone by) of wearing mini watches regardless of the sex of the wearer. And Timothée has walked the red carpets of half the world with Cartier models, vintage or not, with dwarf diameters. One of them was the 23 x 30 mm, 6 mm thick Panthère. Made of steel, it is priced at 4,750 euros.

Last January, the star of A Complete Stranger, in which he plays Bob Dylan, showed up at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in California wearing two tiny Cartier Tank watches. And the former Willy Wonka and Paul Atreides in Dune wore another delicate ‘women’s’ watch to the 2024 Golden Globes, awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association: the original Cartier Crash, with a diamond-studded bezel.

The shape of this watch looks like what its name reveals: that it has been deformed after an accident, and is reminiscent of the soft watches painted by Salvador Dali. Chalamet’s watch, in white gold with a hand-wound mechanical movement, was set with 150 diamonds on the bezel and crown of its case.

It hasn’t all been Cartier in Chalamet’s jewellery box. Before his association with the French brand, he wore a Reverso Classic Large Small Seconds and a Reverso Tribute Duoface in pink gold, both from the Swiss brand Jaeger-LeCoultre, as well as a Grand Pilot’s Watch with a blue dial from IWC. Oh, and a Day-Date from Rolex. The crowning glory on the wrist of the reigning queen of today’s cinema.