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Could the Rolex Datejust be the most complete watch ever?

- Yeo Suan Futt

Rolex is one of the top brands in the world, its five-pointed coronet logo recognised everywhere as a symbol of first-rate watchmaking. Ranked 69 on the Forbes list of the 100 most valuable brands in 2017, at a worth of $8.7 billion, it comes in fifth among the just seven brands in the ‘Luxury’ category (Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, Cartier, Chanel, Coach) to make this top 100 list. As far as this category is concerned, Rolex is quite the anomaly. With the exception of Chanel, the others on the shortlist are all public-listed luxury conglomerates with a finger in every pie of the luxury goods matrix, from apparel and jewellery, to fragrances and timepieces.

Rolex, on the other hand, is an independent, one-product company: it has only ever made, and has declared that it will only make, watches. Everything in-house, from movements, cases, dials and bracelets, down to casting its own gold and drawing its own hairsprings. Yet unlike its cousins at the Académie des Horlogers Créateurs Indépendants (AHCI) producing limited samples in the tens or hundreds, Rolex is an industrial behemoth that rolls out an estimated 800,000 watches a year, yet successfully maintaining the paradoxical harmony of mass production, luxury and prestige, to an extent not equalled by any of the other marques at the ‘haute horlogerie’ table.

How does Rolex do it? In a word, Datejust. Rolex describes it as “the modern archetype of the classic watch”. Translated, the Datejust isn’t just a very well-engineered watch – it is that the Datejust best exemplifies what Rolex is, both in the metal and in spirit, for being a most exceptional timepiece in a most unexceptional segment of watchmaking. Meaning, the everyday wear three-hand with date.

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