Plutocrats, presidents and pioneers: The watch maketh the man — or is it the other way round?

In a list of the greatest watches, you will seldom find one that isn't in some way linked to one of the greatest human beings — and, particularly, to a man on whom history has bestowed greatness.

The relationship between these men and their watches is eternally curious. It’s symbiotic, but it’s not always clear which party, if either, benefits most.

The prima facie conclusion is that the watches benefit immeasurably more. Omega’s Speedmaster, for example, would be far less but for NASA’s moonwalking astronauts, just as TAG Heuer’s Monaco might have been a non-starter had Steve McQueen not picked one out as filming began on Le Mans.

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That, however, is the simplistic view. Doesn’t the humble timepiece deserve some say in the matter, too? How much more presidential does John F. Kennedy seem for wearing an ultra-thin Omega on his wrist during his inauguration? How much more professional do adventurers, such as this generation’s ne plus ultra mountaineer Nims Purja, appear for wearing military-grade Bremont watches during their madcap expeditions? No, we mustn’t underplay the wristwatch’s hand. The benefits of this symbiosis are often evenly distributed.

Rolex’s part in this is particularly acute, of course. Having accompanied Chuck Yeager through the sound barrier in 1947 and Sir Edmund Hillary to the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, it later felt confident to add this footnote to its advertising campaigns: ‘Men who guide the destinies of the world wear Rolex watches.’

Seven decades later, the claim may not be exclusive, but it doesn’t seem the remotest bit fanciful. The notion that a Rolex gives a man a leg-up in life rings true.

This link between image and commodity, embodied by the great wristwatch designs of the 20th century, was a central tenet of Andy Warhol’s work. He was said to have owned more than 300 high-end watches, but regarded few more highly than his Cartier Tank. ‘I don’t wear a Tank watch to tell the time,’ he once said. ‘Actually, I never even wind it. I wear a Tank because it is the watch to wear!’

Warhol recognised that in wearing the right — if we can call it that — watch, his value as a commodity would rise. The theory of mutual benefit appears to work. Yet, as with any theory, the challenge is in establishing whether there’s a point at which it expires — in this case, to identify where the kudos exchange between a watch and its wearer is entirely one-directional.

Royalty, for example, might be beyond it. What could a quotidian accessory, even one in solid gold and created by the most skilled artisans, possibly add to a king? Well, imagine if The King were to have worn a Sekonda to his second son’s wedding, rather than a hand-finished Parmigiani Toric. Had that been his choice, one could safely assume his credibility among sartorialists would have diminished considerably. Still, there’s no question that perceptions of the elite Fleurier manufacture, established only two decades ago, were greatly enhanced by the association with the man who sits on the British throne.

Music, then? Its leading exponents enjoy god-like status, after all. Although again, rapper Stormzy may be a regular visitor to Audemars Piguet’s first-floor Bond Street hideaway, but by shopping what appears to be the length and breadth of the Royal Oak collection, he has proved that some watch designs hold far greater sway over popular opinion than others.

Sir Winston Churchill is a trickier case, even if one often visited. As I’ve written for Country Life before, our war-time leader was a hopeless timekeeper and relied routinely on his Breguet pocket watch to ensure he kept people waiting. Breguet’s unassuming excellence lends authority to all who wear it, but would Churchill’s story be as easy to romanticise had he taken a lesser brand?

Not to categorise it as such (at all), but it was only on researching this story that I discovered Churchill was gifted an IWC pocket watch on his 70th birthday, in 1944, by a group of ‘admiring Zurich physicians’, as the inscription has it. The golden ‘hunter’ pocket watch (one with a hinged cover) carried the further inscription ‘umbra fugit opera manent’, which literally means ‘the shadow flees, but the work remains’.

Perhaps, as an allied victory began to look inevitable, those physicians were alluding to the burden of responsibility that would await the world’s victorious leaders in the aftermath of the conflict. The original is rumoured still to be in the Churchill family’s possession, but IWC has a replica of it in its Schaffhausen museum in Switzerland.

IWC’s legend may grow with the tale, but then so, somehow, does Churchill’s, the watch lending additional gravitas to the moment.

Sticking with the conclusion of the Second World War, Franklin D. Roosevelt wore a Tiffany & Co gold dress watch during the Yalta Conference of February 1945, a piece that serves as a reminder that not all great associations lead to great creative longevity.

The aesthetic of the watch that kept time as F. D. R. met with Churchill and Joseph Stalin to determine how Germany and Europe would be reorganised after the war is completely timeless, yet Tiffany’s recent return to the form has done little to revive its fortunes as a watchmaker.

Further back in time, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s flip-case Reverso was little more than an outlandish concept when Edward VIII abdicated. Because of his decision, the Reverso engraved for his inauguration never reached its intended owner, instead ending up in the Le Sentier company’s archives. Despite the painful ignominy of his path, the upward trajectory of the Reverso continued. Today, it’s seen as a staple of a watch wardrobe of any merit.

There is, of course, a glaring omission in the brands and watches subjected to the theory to this point. Unlike Rolex or even more stoic dial names such as Blancpain (which famously equipped Jacques Cousteau with watches for his early diving expeditions, an association it still trades on today), Patek Philippe has never ventured to create links between its watches and men of any particular distinction. That is not to say they don’t exist, merely that Patek has never been overt in its courtship of greatness. Many of its best watches were commissioned, perhaps a sign that, in some cases, the watch has greater power to augment its owner’s status than the other way round.

Plutocrats of the early 20th century, most famously Henry Graves Jnr and James Ward Packard, entered into a slightly unseemly battle of one-upmanship, commissioning watches with ever greater numbers of complications from Patek. In doing so, they prompted some of the most valuable watches ever made (and the most complicated imagined before the dawn of CAD technology).

In 2014, the Henry Graves Jnr Supercomplication was sold by Sotheby’s for a then-record sum of $24 million (£18.9 million). Were it not for such watches, it’s highly unlikely that these men would still enjoy the oxygen of column inches they do today.

It’s settled, then? Not quite. Because there is one watch that owes almost if not all its greatness entirely to one man. If not for Paul Newman’s love of the Rolex Daytona with an ‘exotic’ dial, the model would almost certainly have disappeared into the archives.

Introduced in the 1960s, the dial configuration that now distinguishes a Rolex ‘Paul Newman’ Daytona was a commercial flop — but thanks to the association, vintage examples routinely sell for six-figure sums and up.

His own watch, given to him by his wife and inscribed with the words ‘Drive Slowly, Joanne’, went under the hammer in 2017 for $17.8 million (£14 million). Newman’s greatness singularly elevated the watch to its current grail status.

There’s an exception to every rule — but, otherwise, great watches and great men co-exist in a sort of mutual-appreciation society. And what a society it is.