A perennial fixture on GQ’s Most Stylish List, Tyler, the Creator has a sense of style as offbeat as his music and lyrics. The name of his fashion label, Golf Wang, says it all. His offbeat takes on preppy classics - cardigans, chinos, polo shirts in lurid colours and surreal prints offset with unusual accessories such as his trademark ushanka hat - would look as cool on an LA skate park as they would on a Florida golf course.
Up until very recently, Tyler (or should that be, the Creator?) was known for wearing a Casio MQ24-9B, which you can pick up on Amazon for around £20, with his trademark Gucci, Supreme and Louis Vuitton looks. But we shouldn’t be surprised: Tyler, The Creator, in spite of his Grammy award winning success, is the indie auteur of hip hop and wearing an inexpensive watch is very much in keeping with the man who once rapped, “I’m a fucking walking paradox”.
More recently, the walking paradox has contradicted himself by upgrading from the cheapest of Casios to one the most sought after grails in Cartier’s storied back catalogue: The Cartier Crash, which he can be seen wearing in the video for ‘Lumberjack’ with a tuxedo and cane.
Legend has it that the distinctive shape of the Crash which looks like a melting clock in the Salvidor Dali painting, ‘The Persistence of Memory’ was inspired by a Bagnoire that had been brought into the brand’s London maison Jean-Jacques Cartier to be repaired after being damaged in a car crash. At the time, Jean-Jacques Cartier, the most creatively minded of the Cartier brothers, believed that he was making the world’s first asymmetric watch.
However, the rapper isn’t the first hip hop star to be spotted wearing the surreal watch, that honour goes to Kanye West who can be seen wearing it when being interviewed by David Letterman in 2019. Perhaps because of the Kanye connection or because of the newfound appreciation for vintage Cartiers, prices for the Crash has done the opposite of its name and has
instead risen exponentially.
Last year, Christie’s sold an 18k gold version similar to The Creator’s for $225,000 from a price estimate of $70-90K. Even with a zero added to the price tag, that still represents a bargain of sorts when compared to the preposterous Jacob and Co bling fests like Drake’s Jacob and Co Astronomia “Casino” which consistently smash records for expense and opulence. In that context, perhaps the Crash isn’t that much of a style swerve after all.
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