How good at basketball do you need to be before a major Swiss watch brand offers to make you your very own pièce unique timepiece? If we’re to judge by the example of Giannis Antetokounmpo and his one-off Breitling, it helps to be a two-time MVP and NBA champion.
Antetokounmpo is a Breitling ambassador, and thus features in much of the brand’s marketing material. However, not everybody gets to add their two cents to a new reference—two, in his case—and even fewer people receive a special, one-of-one watch made just for them. Two new Chronomat watches have been created with design insight from Antetokounmpo: a 40-mm steel Chronomat GMT and a 42-mm gold Chronomat B01 chronograph. It’s the small touches that differentiate these pieces from other similar fare in the collection—woodland green dials in reference to the Bucks’ jerseys; Antetokounmpo’s initials, “G.A,” featured on the central seconds hand counterbalance; a basketball in the background of the chronograph running seconds register at 9 o’clock.
Even with his signature featured on the GMT model’s caseback, or custom packaging, or special-edition numbering, however, neither of these pieces carries the aura or mystique of his pièce unique: A rose gold Chronomat B01, it features a forest-green dial with applied, rose gold Hindu-Arabic numerals, a white tachymeter scale, white chronograph totalizers (the running seconds register features the outline of a basketball), a date window at 6 o’clock in Hindu-Arabic, and a matching bracelet in rose gold. And while you can buy a catalog, solid-gold Chronomat B01 42mm all day long for $42,500, it would take many more years of practicing your jump shot before you’d be offered something like this.
Hindu-Arabic dials, it should be noted, have been steadily gaining in popularity over the past few years. While for many decades they were relegated to special models made for the Middle Eastern market or at the bequest of a particular sheik or monarch, these days can be found on everything from inexpensive Seikos to limited editions—and pièces unique for Mr. Antetokounmpo. And while you can’t score his watch, you could conceivably try some alchemy: Bag yourself a production-model Chronomat and an Arabic-dial Seiko. Wear one on each wrist while the Bucks are playing and pray to the horological deities that they combine into a single, solid-gold, Hindu-Arabic dial timepiece.
Ed Sheeran’s Richard Mille RM 67-02 Italy Edition
The watch-obsessed singer-songwriter was spotted in the stands at Euro 2024 cheering on his native England…wearing a Richard Mille RM 67-02 Italy Edition on his wrist. (The guy couldn’t have had RM whip him up an England Edition?!) We’ll let it slide because the RM 67-02 is a fiercely cool watch: The brand’s lightest automatic timepiece, it’s made of TPT composite and Grade 5 titanium and comes paired to an ultra-light elastic strap. It’s so light, in fact, that it’s used by various professional athletes and RM partners around the world—hence the different available liveries from various countries.
Simone Biles’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
The world’s most decorated gymnast—37 Olympic and World Championship medals, for those counting—appears to have hopped on the Royal Oak train: A post on Simone Biles’ Instagram showed the new 23mm Royal Oak Mini Frosted Gold sitting in its box with the caption “baby”—either a reference to the watch’s teensy profile, or to the fact that Biles treats it like a precious child. The Mini Frosted Gold, available in yellow, pink, or white gold (as seen on Biles’ IG) features a dial and applied indices that match the case color, plus the Audemars Piguet Calibre 2730 quartz movement. A slightly upsized version of a ladies’ watch from 1997, the Mini Frosted Gold has been predictably expanding the appeal of what is already considered a grail watch by many a collector.
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David Beckham’s Tudor Pelagos FXD
One can always count on Beckham to pull off a finely tailored suit with a watch that is best suited for underwater demolitions. Case in point: The English footballing great and Inter Miami FC co-owner was seen at Wimbledon in a Tudor Pelagos FXD, a sporty diver designed in tribute to vintage models used by various naval forces from the 1950s through the 1990s. The “FXD” in the model name comes from “fixed,” which denoted fixed spring bars—it can only take a pass-through strap—while the snowflake handset references ref. 7016 mil-spec Submariners.
Usher’s 1970s Piaget
If you’re gonna accept a Lifetime Achievement Award from BET, you better do it with some A1 wrist candy strapped to your arm. Usher, of course, obliged, rocking an incredible vintage piece from Piaget: Crafted from solid 18K yellow gold and paired to a seamless bracelet in a basketweave pattern, it features a pavé diamond dial with a subtle dauphine handset and the Piaget wordmark. Hand-wound and measuring 24mm in diameter, it’s as much a piece of fine jewelry as it is a watch—but if you’ve got the confidence as a man to pull off such an exquisite, glittering piece of horo-bling, then the world is truly your oyster.