Welcome to Watch Guy Watches, GQ’s monthly curation of high-end timepieces for the true watch nerds among us. This October, Piaget teams up with the Andy Warhol Foundation, Massena LAB joins hands with Angelus, Hermès caters to the guitar players out there, and Breguet keeps the 250th birthday party going with a pocket watch-inspired masterpiece.
By the time Andy Warhol passed away in 1987, the legendary artist had amassed some 300 timepieces. And though he collected many things—everything from crockery to newspaper clippings to Native American art—watches fit neatly within the pop art framework, existing at the confluence of the decorative arts, jewelry, and everyday objects.
Of the watches Warhol owned, seven were from Piaget, the luxury watchmaker founded in 1874 that’s famous for its stone-dial watches and its ultra-thin mechanical movements. In 1973, Warhol purchased a reference 15102, a yellow gold cushion-cased watch measuring 45 mm in diameter and built using the then-revolutionary Beta 21 quartz movement. Designed by the maison’s creative director Jean-Claude Gueit, very few of these timepieces were made. (Notably, when Warhol died and his estate contents were auctioned by Sotheby’s, Piaget itself purchased four of his seven Piaget watches and returned them to its archive.)
Retroactively given the name “Black Tie,” the ref. 15102 was reissued in time for Piaget’s 140th anniversary in 2014. A decade later, Piaget partnered with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, going one step further and renaming the collection The Andy Warhol Watch. Among the numerous expressions of the famed artist’s cushion-cased Piaget, the latest is perhaps the most visually arresting: The new Andy Warhol Watch ‘Collage’ Limited Edition ($78,000) doesn’t merely pair a precious-metal case with one of its signature stone dials, but instead journeys down a Pop Art rabbit hole to embody the man himself and convey his essence through a piece of miniature art.
Courtesy of Piaget
Courtesy of Piaget
Executed in 18-karat yellow gold and measuring 45 mm in diameter—just like the 15102—the ‘Collage’ uses a Polaroid self-portrait of Warhol as the basis for a spectacular dial made of a marqueterie of gemstones. Deciding that color was a paramount theme in the first year of the Piaget x Andy Warhol Foundation partnership, the maison reimagined the Polaroid image first as an abstraction in Warhol’s signature style, then as a series of four cut stones: a black onyx base overlaid with thin slices of yellow Namibian serpentine, pink opal, and green chrysoprase. (Take a look at the image of the watch dial in-process, and you’ll understand where it came from.)
Powered by the in-house Piaget cal. 501P1 ultrathin automatic movement with a 40-hour power reserve, the new Andy Warhol Watch ‘Collage’ Limited Edition is among the more inspired “collab” watches of 2025. Rather than making something painfully on the nose, Piaget reimagined one of Warhol’s favorite objects just as Warhol himself might’ve done: In an interpretive fashion that makes one pause, think, and inevitably smile.
Angelus Chronographe Télémètre Massena LAB
Courtesy of Angelus