The Oscar red carpet unfolds at a moment when nothing has been decided yet, but everything is already being judged. The focus settles almost entirely, and often superficially on the nominees. The winners haven’t been announced. The speeches haven’t been given. Their futures, at least in the official sense, remain unwritten. For now, all eyes are on them on how they’ve chosen, or allowed someone else to choose, to present themselves to the world.
This is when the photographs matter most. Photographs preserve the details that will soon be dissected, circulated, and absorbed into the endless scroll. A cuff pulled back slightly. A hand adjusting a jacket. And occasionally, on the wrist, something that doesn’t quite belong to the present.
Not the newest watch.
Something older. Or something that looks older.
Something that has already lived through another era entirely.
Timothée Chalamet and the Shape of Endurance
When Timothée Chalamet arrived at the 2025 Academy Awards wearing a custom butter-yellow Givenchy suit, his watch had already existed for three decades. It was a Cartier Baignoire, reference 1960, produced in 1994 as part of Cartier’s Byzantine Collection.
The design resists easy placement. Oval, asymmetrical, and slightly disorienting, it came from a period when Cartier was experimenting with its own archive reinterpreting earlier forms rather than abandoning them.
By the time Chalamet wore it, the watch had outlasted entire fashion cycles. It had existed long enough to lose any connection to trend.
What remained was form. And memory.
Rami Malek and the Return of the Pasha
Rami Malek attended the 2020 Academy Awards wearing a vintage gold Pasha de Cartier from 1993, paired with a black Saint Laurent tuxedo. The leather strap and warm gold case gave the watch a quiet presence beneath the cuff.
The Pasha’s origins reach back further still, to a design commissioned in the 1940s. Its defining feature the protective cap chained to the crown was created to seal the watch against water and dust. The structure remained intact decades later.
It still worked exactly as it was meant to.
Malek’s appearance also preceded Cartier’s relaunch of the Pasha collection later that year, reconnecting the watch with the contemporary moment without altering its identity.
Michelle Yeoh and the Compression of Time
Michelle Yeoh’s long association with Richard Mille has unfolded alongside a career spanning more than forty years. Richard Mille produces watches in extremely limited numbers, with production runs that end quickly and rarely return. Their scarcity becomes part of their timeline.
When Yeoh wore the Richard Mille RM 07-02 at the 2023 Academy Awards, paired with a custom Dior Couture gown, the watch had already entered that narrower existence.
The case, machined from sapphire crystal over the course of forty days, was outlined with diamond-set indices anchored by hand-finished gold prongs. Beneath the surface, the movement continued forward without interruption.
Yeoh has continued to wear Richard Mille watches, carrying their timeline alongside her own.
Elle Fanning and the Return of Ornament
Elle Fanning’s Cartier Zelda HPI01765, worn at the 2025 Oscars, belonged to a category modern watchmaking rarely revisits. Jewelry watches emerged during a period when timekeeping was still personal. Their purpose extended beyond measurement.
Crafted in rhodiumized 18-carat white gold and set with more than 300 brilliant-cut diamonds across its case, dial, and bracelet, the watch occupied the space between instrument and jewelry. Despite its appearance, it remains a functioning timepiece, powered by a quartz movement and finished with Cartier’s signature sword-shaped hands.
Fanning’s choice brought that earlier perspective back into view.
Mahershala Ali and the Turn-of-the-Century Foundation
At the 2019 Oscars, Mahershala Ali wore a Cartier Santos whose origins predated the Academy Awards themselves.
The original Santos was introduced in 1904, when Louis Cartier designed a wristwatch for aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, allowing him to read the time without removing his hands from the controls of his aircraft.
Ali’s skeletonized version was based on Cartier’s modern interpretation released in 2018. Its exposed Caliber 9611 MC movement replaced the traditional dial, with bridges forming the Roman numerals that have defined the Santos for more than a century.
The structure remained unchanged.
It continued to do what it had always done.
Why Vintage Watches Changed the Red Carpet
Vintage and vintage-derived watches introduce something unfamiliar into environments built around control.
A new watch arrives without context. Its story begins at the moment it appears.
A watch that has already existed for decades arrives differently. Its presence reflects continuity rather than introduction.
For actors, whose work depends on inhabiting other timelines, this continuity carries particular resonance.
These watches were not made for this moment.
They arrived here anyway.
What Survives
The Academy Awards exist to create permanence. Names are added to a fixed record. Moments are preserved.
Vintage watches exist because they have already passed through moments that were never meant to last.
They continue forward without needing to change.
They outlast careers.
They outlast trends.
They outlast the moments that briefly brought them back into view.
And long after the ceremony ends, after the stage has been dismantled and the audience has moved on, they remain.
Still ticking.
Still measuring.
Still keeping time.
Still inspiring new designs.
