When, in 1963, Hans Wilsdorf was finally succeeded by Andrew Heiniger, the new boss of Rolex knew he had to shake things up. He needed a watch that made a statement for being unlike anything Rolex had made before. He turned to Gerald Genta – the watch design legend-tobe – and, 60 years ago this year, the aptly named King Midas would be launched.
The King Midas was a plain yet refined two-hander, though that description does not do the watch any favours. It features an asymmetrical pentagonal engraved case, with the winding crown shaped like a stylised sun, and placed on a minimalistic link bracelet. It was also gold, and in a big way: the King Midas was Rolex’s most expensive watch up until that time. It was also the heaviest gold watch then commercially available, and the first to use synthetic sapphire crystal glass.
The watch would find an unlikely fan in the perma-macho John Wayne and was, of course, the watch worn by Christopher Lee as Francesco Scaramanga, the villain in the James Bond film ‘The Man With the Golden Gun’, with marks its 50th anniversary this year. But the watch’s most apposite acolyte? The king of living large, aka The King, aka Elvis Presley; he would end up damaging his first of many by wearing it in the bath, such was his attachment to the watch.
Perhaps this was the tipping point, the moment when gold moved from being a noble material for classic dress watches to making any watch it came in a totem of flashiness; at best, a kind of wearable insurance. It is a gold Art Deco Patek Philippe, after all, that Michael Douglas – free of any other form of money – hawks for cash in ‘The Game’ (1997) in order to get back to the US from Mexico. “A man with a watch like that doesn’t have a visa problem,” he is told.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 72-utgaven av WOW Singapore.
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