‘Killing Them Softly’: Vintage Watches & The Stealth Wealth Aesthetic

But, like all things in the age of internet virality, fashion trends have an annoying tendency to resuscitate themselves at lightspeed. To go a step further, many netizens – like those in content creation or the business of fashion – would poopoo my take entirely: arguing our appetite for ‘quiet luxury’ has merely waned over the last two years, as opposed to fully disappearing.

Take, for example, ‘old money style’: today, the term still gets about 500,000 monthly searches on Google – with 10 percent of that figure accounted for by users based in the US. (Incidentally, also the single biggest market for luxury watches by revenue – now that consumer spending in China is way down.)

All of this setup is important for present purposes, as it underscores the public’s continuing interest in ideas of ‘quiet luxury’, ‘stealth wealth’ and the ‘old money’ aesthetic. As someone who has worked in lifestyle publishing for the best part of a decade – with one foot gingerly in fashion’s zeitgeist most of that time – I’ve had a front row seat to the way our culture broadly internalises and employs these concepts interchangeably.

Why? Because, to be blunt, they’re variations on the same theme.

In his book Status and Culture (2022), the American author W. David Marx puts a really tidy bow around what that exact theme consists of – by way of the ubiquitous oxford cloth button-down.

Basically, Marx’s take is that “even though people of all backgrounds wear it”, the oxford shirt’s “overpowering association with historical high-status figures” make it an indispensable element in the old money/quiet luxury aesthetic. He also cites a number of the garment’s innate characteristics (“minimalism, understatement, shabbiness”) as the explanation for its timeless, crossover appeal. 

For quiet luxury fans, Gianni Agnelli may well be your first point of reference for pulling off tailored shirts – but that doesn’t mean skaters and Boiler Room ravers don’t also wear them.

It’s not hard to envision Marx arriving at a similar verdict about vintage watches. After all, many of the traits he identifies as desirable, about the oxford shirt and similar bits of clothing, are arguably even more present in fine Swiss horology. A Ref. 2526 Calatrava, with a platinum case in mint condition, for example, is a watch that is rare and – by corollary – discrete: practically invisible to the sort of bad actor who plans their pickpocketing around what’s trending on TikTok. 

Of course, not every vintage timepiece that embraces the stealth wealth vibe will fly as low on the proverbial radar as many collectors would like: a state of affairs we can largely thank European tycoons and the Hollywood jetset for. 

Parsing the social media accounts of eagle-eyed watch spotters like Nick Gould (a.k.a. @niccoloy), a handful of pieces – three of which we’ll run through below – begin to stand out for their popularity – among movie stars, visionary fashion designers and Italian industrialists. 

Most conspicuously, you have the Royal Oak Ref. 5402: the forerunner to the luxury sports watch that continues to underwrite Audemars Piguet’s business this century. Colloquially referred to as the ‘Jumbo’, this 39mm design boasts a formidable A-list fanbase. 

This includes Alain Delon, whose personal 5402 made multiple cameos on-screen and in interviews throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s; and Luca Cordero di Montezemolo – one-time protégé of Agnelli (incidentally, also a connoisseur of complicated watches). 

That the original ‘Jumbo’ design language proved just as intriguing to Lagerfeld, as it did more archetypal high-status individuals, is undoubtedly part of the reason why it remains a firm favourite among discerning collectors today. 

Similarly, there’s the vaunted Ref. 3700: the first generation of Patek Philippe’s now-overfamiliar Nautilus (previously written about in-depth by our colleague Alvise Mori).
In spite of the fact that the watch’s fundamental design language isn’t one we’d objectively describe as being underrated – every MMA fighter and their dog now appears to own a 5711 – in the specific case of the 3700, factory data tells an interesting story.

Between the 3700/1 and 3700/11, experts have variously estimated no more than 7,500 pieces in this reference were made. For scale: that’s around 20% more than the total production run for the Royal Oak 5402.

 
With this enlarged volume come deeper, more nuanced collecting opportunities. These range from 3700 models with the consummate ‘ribbed’ black dial to others in the mysterious white prototype configuration and, of course, the ‘tropical’ specimen actor Brad Pitt was famously seen sporting last year in New York.

Sure, at a superficial remove, anybody who has spent a nominal amount of time on the internet will quickly work out that the Ocean’s Eleven actor is wearing some type of Nautilus. But beyond that trite observation, how many people would care to look more closely or, to put things more accurately, know what they’re supposed to be looking at?    

This, to my mind, is the most vital quality for any object that purports to be ‘quiet luxury’. No matter whether it’s a vintage sports watch or well-worn cashmere sweater, the thing you love should identify you to fellow members of your tribe – and pass undetected among everyone else.