No shade to the Cartier Tank—it’s the quintessential dress watch for a reason—but it’s far from the only game in town. And we’re not even talking about other brands, here—the Parisian maison itself is responsible for so many curvaceous and compelling pieces that to focus only on the WWI-era Tank would be a horological travesty.
Paul Mescal gets it. At Wimbledon, the Irish actor rocked a dainty vintage Gondole, a piece not dissimilar from the Tank in many respects, but noticeably different in others. First released in 1973 as part of the Louis Cartier collection—a moment that saw the brand relaunch several historical models as well a few new ones—the Gondole is an 18K gold watch with a tall, rounded rectangular case with a smooth, stepped bezel and a blue sapphire cabochon crown. Like most Cartier timepieces from that period, it features a white dial with black Arabic indices, a chemin de fer minute track, and a blued steel sword handset. The original 1970s reference 97050 would’ve been powered by a hand-wound ETA-derived movement.
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The Louis Cartier collection stems from an interesting period in the maison’s history. In the early 70s, the brand was acquired by an investor consortium that reunited the three branches in Paris, London, and New York. And whereas the jeweler’s branches once operated independently, creating small-batch novelties, this new version of Cartier started working with Ebel and producing its watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The upshot? Standardized production across the maison’s catalog, and significantly more Cartier watches out in the world.
If you take a look at the dozen designs introduced (or reintroduced) in 1973, they all share a distinct vibe: yellow- (or white-) gold dress watches with shaped cases, Roman-numeral dials, cabochon-set crowns, hand-wound movements, and leather straps. What differentiates one from the other is largely the case shape. Some of these new pieces were more rectangular, others rounded, elliptical, circular, or oval-shaped. But it’s precisely this variety that makes Cartier dress watches such an interesting proposition. If you like the idea of a shaped precious-metal watch, then there’s at least one model that’ll suit your fancy.
Mescal’s Wimbledon getup—blue suit with wide lapels, white dress shirt with a wide blue pinstripe and a floral tie—is precisely the sort of fit that jives with an elegant Cartier dress watch like the 1970s Gondole. Because while its case may look small by modern luxury sports watch standards, it’s perfectly in line with the more refined tastes of yesteryear, a period where men weren’t afraid to rock smaller watches and look great doing so.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak ‘Jumbo’ Extra-Thin Openworked
Oklahoma City Thunder’s newly crowned Finals champion, Finals MVP, and NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added another prize to his trophy case. SGA won Best Male Athlete at the 2025 ESPYs with a champion-caliber watch on his wrist: the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak ‘Jumbo’ Extra-Thin Openworked. Housed in an 18K yellow gold case, it features the same 39-mm diameter as the original RO “Jumbo” from 1972 but boasts an openworked movement, meaning that material has been carved away to afford a view into its componentry. Being a Royal Oak, it of course features a matching yellow gold integrated bracelet and the collection’s classic octagonal bezel with eight screws. (Novak Djokovic’s wife Jelena wore this same watch to the Australian Open back in January.)
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Courtesy of Richard Mille
LeBron James’s Richard Mille RM 65-01
Owning a Richard Mille means you’ve done something right in life. Wearing a Richard Mille that you helped design is some next-level stuff. That’s what LeBron James did at the 2025 NBA Summer League game in Las Vegas this week, rocking his new RM 65-01. Limited to 150 pieces, the collab watch features a host of wild Lakers-inspired colors throughout its tonneau-shaped case. Yellow and purple on the crown, subdials, bracelet, and outer minute track, plus splashes of blue on the hour indices, a bit of orange in the reference number, and bright green in the date window and on James’s logo at 12 o’clock. An automatic split-seconds chronograph, the RM 65-01 retails for roughly $400K.
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