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John Mayer and Ed Sheeran are buds, their shared songwriting, singing, and guitaristic talent clearly having brought them together. They perform together, attend events together—it’s all very endearing, frankly.
But even more endearing, as far as we’re concerned, is the unrelenting, A-1 horological nerdery that these two musicians share. Tthey’ve been known to buy their watches in pairs—and to perform in them together. (Sometimes these watches even have Spider-Man on them.) They’ve collaborated on watch designs together. They’ve even appeared on Hodinkee’s Talking Watches together.
So it’s little surprise Ed Sheeran was spotted at the Oracle Red Bull Racing garage ahead of the F1 Grand Prix in Miami this past weekend rocking the new Mayer-designed Royal Oak. (He also sported the watch at last night’s Met Gala—and was kind enough to send GQ an exclusive photo of it on his wrist.) Launched in early March and celebrated a few weeks back in Los Angeles, this is no run-of-the-mill “luxury sports watch”—to the extent that a Gérald Genta-penned classic can be, anyway—but a perpetual calendar with a stunning blue dial and a white gold case. Measuring just 9.1 millimeters tall, its automatic Calibre 5134 movement powers time, day, date, month, moon phase, week number, and leap year indicators. Inspired by the look of—in Mayer’s words— a “moonless sky,” it’s easily one of the most breathtaking models in AP’s vast catalog.
Close as they are, it’s little surprise that Sheeran would drop nearly $200,000 for one. Mayer had originally proposed the watch as a pièce unique to then-AP CEO François-Henry Bennahmias, who convinced him that it should be a limited-edition production model instead. And it’s a good thing Mayer agreed, as collectors have eagerly gobbled them up, even considering the stratospheric pricing. (Perpetual calendars, which compute all the aforementioned information mechanically and can keep track of leap years, are notoriously difficult to engineer. And white gold ain’t cheap either, you know?)
An avid collector, Sheeran has wide-ranging taste in watches, which run the gamut from complicated APs to G-Shocks to MoonSwatches to travel-ready Pateks. Influenced by Mayer, he’s collected some of the hottest pieces in the world, but isn’t afraid to throw on a fun, inexpensive, plasticky fan favorite, either. Mayer’s Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar is unquestionably one of the hottest and best-looking watches of 2024—hopefully, it represents just the tip of the iceberg with respect to his creative output with the maison. And there seems to be little doubt that whatever he thinks up next will find its way onto Sheeran’s wrist.