EDITOR’S TAKE: Was It a Good Move for Bernard Arnault to Post His Piece Unique Nautilus 5740?

Look, it’s no secret that the watch industry, and especially the enthusiast culture can be a cynical place sometimes (well, maybe more frequent than sometimes). There hasn’t been a more blatant time than the release of the Tiffany Dial Patek Philippe Nautilus late last year.

We’ve covered this piece pretty exhaustively, even to record two podcast episodes to discuss it in depth. The watch world definitely provided an overkill level of content around the entire ordeal, and while it’s mostly died down, the availability, allocation, and even memes have been the talk of the town, and entertaining (to say the least). Hell, we even started a celebrity allocation tracker because people seemed interested in who ended up with the insanely limited edition piece.

So firing up the internet, once again, was Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, posting a picture playing chess with his son, Frederic in a piece unique Patek Philippe Nautilus 5740 with Tiffany Blue Dial and Tiffany Stamp.

Photos courtesy of @frederic.arnault on Instagram

Never mind that I simply find the watch not particularly attractive (the weird yellow filter certainly doesn’t help). Mostly the dial is too complicated for the color - which is bold, and the maker needs to be intentional about where it gets used. I find that the decision to post such a watch is stoking a fire that doesn’t particularly bode well in the current climate and cynicism of Watch culture.

The Tiffany Blue dial was dividing enough in a standard 5711, adding it to a further complicated 5740 as a piece unique that literally nobody will ever see, nor likely will ever be produced feels like a bad joke. A comedy of error that, intentional or not, falls flat.

Part of my issue has been that the Tiffany Dial Patek Philippe 5711 is the butt of every allocation joke I’ve heard recently. Is opting to post an in-your-face Nautilus 5740 really the smartest move? Also, with the latest re-branding of Tiffany & Co into a more luxury brand, and unattainable by more middle-class collectors, paired with this absolutely, 100% unattainable timepiece branding the Tiffany stamp - the idea behind the post just slaps me the wrong way.

We’d like to believe that industry professionals as high-up and prestigious as the Arnaults would be more than aware of the current temperature of their followers.

What do y’all think? We’d love to hear your comments below. Was this the best way to handle showing off a piece-unique?