Emily in Paris, the campy, cliche-ridden hate-watch that we can’t take our eyes off, is back for another season on Netflix. To recap: Emily is a young woman from Chicago who is sent to Paris, despite not speaking a word of French, to offer “an American perspective” to a luxury marketing agency that has just been acquired by the company she works for in America.
In the show, quelle horreur, dogs poop on the street, the men are sexy but sexist, everyone chain smokes and is mean and rude, and yet somehow, magically, all seem to speak fluent English. Emily’s gaudy outfits showcase the worst of basic American suburban fashions, which, if actually worn in the offices of a real Parisian luxury business, would surely not last the time it takes to eat a pain au chocolat.
Nevertheless, despite the preposterous inaccuracies, Emily somehow manages to win us over with her plucky American charm. Towards the end of season one, a love interest in the form Mathieu Cadault (played by Charles Martins), emerges in a series of sharp suits and what looks like a rather nice watch: a Möon Black Cosmic with moonphase complication made by the small independent Swiss manufacture, Le Rhone.
Mathieu, the nephew of a famous (fictional) couturier, Pierre Cadault, works as the “business manager” for his whimsical and slightly eccentric uncle, and so is therefore used to the finer things in life. Emily initially meets him when pitching for his company’s business on behalf of her marketing agency, "Savoir" and a series of mishaps involving a dress and a press event gone wrong pull them closer together and - et voila - a love affair ensues. (We did warn you, the plot is nothing if not basic as hell.)
All the while Mathieu looks every inch the swarthy French businessman doing business things with his watch which contains a complication that allows the wearer to check exactly when the next full moon will occur. Mathieu’s version has a rose gold case and a dial made out of aventurine, a special sparkly glass invented in Murano, which glimmers and shimmers like a pitch-black starry night sky.
The craggily textured silver moon that represents the different moon phase complication appears to float behind the luminescent hour markers and ‘stars’ sprinkled generously in the background of the dial. The watch is powered by an in-house Grande Phase de Lune automatic movement which can be seen in the transparent case back, and comes in a 41mm and 31mm size.
Watches with black dials and a little bit of bling, like this particular example, are an example of what I like to call ‘disco watches’ - ones which are fun to wear on an evening out. This is not the first time that the actor Charles Martins has worn Le Rhone, either. When the brand was first launched in 2013, Martins was chosen as a model for its first campaign which was shot at Place Vendome. Well, at least that's one detail that Emily in Paris didn’t get completely wrong.
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