MASTERS OF THE ARTS

The extraordinary Rolex Mentor and Protegé Initiative marks its 20th anniversary this year. And where better to celebrate that milestone than in one of the world's great crucibles of culture, Athens? Prestige flies in for the party.

- JON WALL

You see them whenever you pick up a glossy magazine, watch advertisements featuring celebrities from the worlds of showbusiness, fashion and sport—beautiful people for whom elegance is an attitude and time is precious, and who are unlikely to crack under pressure. Flip through to the social pages and you might even spot the very same faces, this time standing onstage with arm crooked at the elbow and watch glitteringly displayed upon an upturned wrist.

Such endorsements such aren’t new. Indeed, the power of star association has been central to the business of selling watches for at least 100 years—and it’s evidently as potent now as it ever was. Yet for one brand in particular, it’s never been solely about celebrity and nor, for that matter, pretty faces.

Rolex’s founder Hans Wilsdorf may not have possessed much in the way of watchmaking skills, but he did know how to sell his products to exactly the right people. Determined from the outset to make timepieces of the highest quality, he was also quick to appreciate the sales impetus that might be gained from their association with world-beating achievements in the realms of sport and exploration. Thus, in the late 1920s Rolex partnered with the first British cross-Channel woman swimmer Mercedes Gleitze, in the 1930s with the world land-speed record-holder Malcolm Campbell and, in the early 1950s, with the British Everest expedition and its successful first ascent of Earth’s highest mountain.