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Rolex’s New Watch Features Slivers of an Actual Meteorite

Photo credit: Don Penny
Photo credit: Don Penny

Above: Bradley L. Bowers, founder of an eponymous industrial design studio based in New Orleans whose cloudlike paper Halo Light draws on celestial forms, wears a meteorite-dial Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona in Everose. $41,000. rolex.com.


The earth seems to get smaller every day, as its farthest reaches are increasingly accessible to even the most novice travelers. It’s no surprise, then, that in recent decades our collective attention—and wanderlust—has turned toward the heavens. Among those dreamers are titans of contemporary commerce with childhood dreams to fulfill, and Rolex, which is tapping into the zeitgeist—and the great unknown. The Swiss watch brand has taken inspiration from extreme travel and exploration since the early 1950s (see Rolex’s Explorer, Submariner, and Sea-Dweller models) and, with one of its latest introductions, is putting cosmic material to earthly use.

The 40-millimeter Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona is among Rolex’s most desirable models, but to acquire one in stainless steel with a simple black or white dial at retail, your wait will be counted in years. Released in 1963, the Daytona is a chronograph originally designed for racecar drivers with the technical requisite of a tachymetric bezel. (It was also intended for cosmonauts to wear in space—hence the name.) The dial on this new incarnation, the case of which comes in white, yellow, or Everose gold, is made from a sliver of meteorite, which was collected from fragments of an asteroid that exploded millions of years ago and traveled across the solar system. Even watch collectors, a cohort generally wedded to precision and uniformity, will be bewitched by the unpredictable metallic patterns found on each dial, with its unique crystallized formations that were set in motion by forces light-years away. It is a rare instrument that captures every instant with accuracy and, at the same time, also reveals a glimpse of the infinite.

Photo credit: Hearst Owned
Photo credit: Hearst Owned

This story originally appeared in the October 2021 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE

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