Heavy-Hitting Watch Collectors Cruise Rodeo Drive Boutiques for ‘Experience Time’
In the 1990 film Pretty Woman, a young sex worker played by Julia Roberts famously walks into a fashion boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Calif., only to be snubbed by the sales clerks.
Watch lovers who flocked to the avenue on Oct. 8 had the polar opposite experience. Five watchmaking maisons—IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, and Vacheron Constantin—hosted an opening night cocktail event, dubbed Experience Time, that marked the start of the 2nd Annual Rodeo Drive Celebrates Timepieces & Fine Jewelry, a weeklong celebration of artisan meet-and-greets, watchmaking classes, product exhibitions, panel discussions, and other happenings geared toward enthusiasts looking to immerse themselves in the world of horology.
The opening night crowd was a who’s who of the Southern California watch community. Art photographer Melanie Pullen, watch-woman-about-town Georgia Benjamin, and collector Nathalie Wheldon, owner of Hovigs Supply House, a Los Angeles-based supplier of watch components, were among the partygoers who congregated at the Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique, a long and narrow space filled with the din of watch geeks admiring each other’s timepieces.
Erfan Khan, a Los Angeles–based collector, wore a decade-old yellow-gold JLC Duometre to the event, though he couldn’t help admiring the cases stocked with newer models.
“I take it you’re a watch lover?” a reporter asked.
Khan’s friend, a well-dressed 20-something with slicked back black hair, shook his head. “You have no idea,” he said.
“My father was into watches,” Khan told Robb Report. “He was one of the pioneer industrialists in Bangladesh. That’s where I’m from originally—I grew up there. It’s a family thing. My dad, my uncle, and then I got into watches. I gravitated toward the whole concept of merging art and engineering.
More from Robb Report
The Best New Timepieces to Check Out at WatchTime New York This Fall
This Fall's Most Elegant Women's Watches, Bags, and Jewelry Aren't Afraid of the Long Haul
Across the street, at the two-story IWC boutique, former Hodinkee editor Stephen Pulvirent moderated a discussion about collecting between L.A. restaurateur Jesse Gomez and IWC boutique manager Yousef Abgoon, as pro skater and new IWC ambassador Jagger Eaton watched from the sidelines.
“Is there anything that you see on the horizon for yourself?” Pulvirent asked Gomez. “I’m not asking you about a particular watch, but is there a direction you’re looking in where you could say, ‘This is something I’m getting into now?’”
Gomez paused. “I mean, tourbillons are always nice, but they’re also semi-unaffordable. The higher complicated pieces are always kind of intriguing because they’re beautiful mechanical pieces of art. When I was in my 20s or 30s, they were a little bit out of my range. They’re a little closer to my range now. And definitely something I’m more intrigued by.”
Pulvirent pressed Gomez on the notion of watches as heirlooms to be passed down from one generation to the next: “Is that something you ever think about, Jesse?”
“I don’t really think about it, but when I get a new watch, I always tell my friends, ‘My daughter just added a new piece to her collection,’” Gomez said. “It’s fun sharing the hobby with my daughter, even though she’s 4 years old. I’m pretty sure when she’s 17, 18, she’s going to know the differences between a chronograph and a perpetual calendar.”
Like most collectors, Gomez struck a note of ambivalence about the addictive aspects of the hobby
“Man, it’s just a rabbit hole,” he said. “It’s like cars and high-end clothing—every year, it gets better and better and better. And you think, ‘Okay. I got this piece. This is it. This is the best piece I will get from this brand.’ And then a year later, two years later, something pops up and you’re like, ‘I kind of want that.’ I mean, it’s genius marketing, right? It just never ends. And that’s what they need to do to keep you interested.”
Pulvirent turned to Abgoon, seeking tips on how newcomers might best position themselves “as they’re getting into their collecting journey.”
“It depends what they’re in for,” Abgoon replied. “We have emotional collectors that buy anything they like. And then we have very calculated collectors that only buy certain things. And in the sales world, we’ve learned how to talk to most of these people. So we try to help people to buy, as opposed to selling them. We have a lot of clients that come here and tell us that this is one of the few stores on Rodeo where you guys didn’t try to sell me anything.”
The opposite, in a sense, was true at the Piaget boutique, where Manuel Alonso Cloux, the brand’s omnichannel director for U.S. and Canada, proudly showed off the new Polo Skeleton. The $42,900 timepiece debuted last month at Watches and Wonders Shanghai in a new, slender, matte-black ceramic casing.
“This watch, we absolutely love it,” Cloux said. “It’s beautiful. It’s very different and it helps us to recruit new customers that today we don’t have. It’s younger, it’s sport, it’s cool, it’s contemporary.”
By the time Robb Report made it to the Panerai boutique a few storefronts away, it was 8 p.m., and Experience Time was winding down. The Aperol spritzes, however, were still flowing as a handful of collectors milled around the space, staring longingly into the cases.
Best of Robb Report
Sign up for RobbReports's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
