Building a watch collection is an expression of your personality and your lifestyle. If you are the type who wears a suit every day, then you will likely focus on dress watches with leather bands and striking dials. If you’re an adventurer, the Indiana Jones type, you are likely going to love a good field watch. No matter what, you will dive into the best of the best the industry has to offer. Whatever watch you pick up, you are almost guaranteed to seriously consider grabbing one of the most iconic watches that has hit the market. Or at the very least, one of its descendants.
If you don’t know which men’s watches are the most iconic, which ones changed the industry, or which ones influenced your favorites, we have them here. Whether you’re a history buff or just a curious chronophile, here are the most iconic watches for men.
TAG Heuer Carrera
It is hard to think of iconic watches and not look to the Tag Heuer brand. Its Carrera model was a trendsetter in the moto-inspired race watch industry and to this day, stands as one of the pioneers. It is known for sporting the minutes in an angled fashion, perfect for reading while hitting the corners at 120 mph. Not that we would advise ever going 120 mph, much less look at your watch while you do.
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
How can we not include the watch that started its own genre of watches? For a long time, you had luxury watches worn by civilians and dandies in suits and you had sports enthusiasts wearing rugged tool watches and sports watches. That was until the Royal Oak appeared and merged the two into the luxury sports watch genre, with their steel look incorporating the visible lugnuts on the outside of the bezels to resemble dive helmets of the time. A pioneer that definitely makes the Royal Oak an icon.
Patek Philippe Calatrava
Patek Philippe is one of the world’s most iconic and enduring watch companies. It is almost always a main attraction at the yearly Watches and Wonders. A century and a half of great timepieces means there are almost too many to choose from when picking an icon. But its signature, the Calatrava is as good as any you can choose. But it isn’t a random choice, it is one of the oldest models still in production and influenced almost every dress watch you wear today.
Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Chronograph
Complications are when a watch does anything more than tell the time. Of course, almost every watch nowadays does more than tell the time. However, the geniuses over at Patek Philippe mastered combining the perpetual calendar with watchmaking way back in 1941 and no one has done it as well since. Very few other brands even attempt the feat, which makes it a pioneer in the industry and a lone wolf at the same time. Making this one the second of the brand to land a spot on this list.
Breitling Navitimer
There are many things that a pilot should never lose track of … but one of the most important is elapsed time. Without knowing how long you have been in the air, you don’t know where you are or how much fuel you have left. Detrimental problems to have. While most things are all done by computer nowadays, Breitling created this quintessential pilot’s best friend in the early ’50s, and it is still seen on many pilot’s wrists today, despite the computer’s help.
Rolex Datejust
It’s Rolex, if you’re surprised that it’s on the list then you haven’t been reading enough of The Manual. There are four Rolex watches on this list, and we start with the one that had two big firsts for the company. The Datejust was the debut of the waterproof Oyster case and the self-winding Perpetual movement, the beginning of so many things for the biggest brand in the world.
Rolex GMT-Master
Sorry Coca-Cola fans, it’s Pepsi time with the second of four Rolex icons. The GMT is best known aesthetically for its red and blue split dial like the coloring of a Pepsi can. For the more horologically in tune … it is known for the first-ever 24-hour hand that allowed the watch to tell the time in two different time zones. Perfect for its intended users, the pilots for Pan Am.
Rolex Cosmograph Daytona
The third of four Rolex watches on the list of icons lands with the Daytona. Sure, it is iconic because it’s the result of Rolex becoming the official timekeeper of the Daytona 500 in 1962, resulting in this masterpiece. But it gained significant notoriety from fans when Paul Newman adopted it when his wife gifted him one. Since then, it became the highest-selling watch ever at auction when it sold for $15.5 million in 2017. That seems like a good reason to land it here.
Rolex Submariner
There was no other choice for the fourth and final Rolex on the list than the one that filled the demand for some serious daredevils. In the 1950s, when scuba diving was taking off, divers wanted a watch that could withstand the pressures of the deep, so Rolex provided them with the Submariner, the first watch that could reach 100 meters. And, let’s not forget that Sean Connery adopted it for the first three James Bond movies. So, if it is good enough for the greatest spy in the world … it is good enough for us.
Cartier Santos
OK, enough Rolex love, let’s move to another giant in the accessory industry. Cartier is well known for being the king of jewelers and the jeweler of kings. While it focused on that job, Alberto Santos-Dumont, a pioneering aviator asked his friend, Louis Cartier for a watch that was easy to read during his flights. From that request, the Cartier Santos was born. Maybe the first ever pilot watch, and definitely the most elegant.
Cartier Tank
If you have ever seen a square dress watch with the distinct Roman numeral shape on the inside and that really odd IIII instead of IV, you think of this watch. The Cartier Tank is one of the most famous watches in the world thanks to the style of none other than John F. Kennedy. Anything he wore immediately became an icon. Just in case you’re wondering, some French kings preferred IIII so it would make sense that a French company would adopt the style.
Omega Speedmaster Professional ‘Moonwatch’
Now we come to another master in watchmaking, Omega. And of course, the most iconic watch it has in its arsenal is the Speedmaster. Originally designed for motorsports, the Speedmaster was submitted as a possible choice for astronauts headed to the moon. That’s right, the freaking moon.
No matter how you slice it, going to the moon is undeniably iconic, so this watch is a lock to land on the list of icons. Not only was it the first watch on the moon, something no watch could EVER take from it, but it also was the first watch with a tachometer on the bezel. Just for extra pizzazz.
Omega Seamaster
This line has a historic legacy that began as a dive watch to celebrate its 100th anniversary and then became a full-fledged diving tool with the release of the 300 version. While it was rated for only 200 meters, the people over at Omega believed it could fully handle the pressures of 300 meters, so they named it as such.
To add a little luster to its credentials on this list, it became the one to unseat the Rolex as the classic James Bond watch. Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond adopted the Omega for his first outing as 007 in Goldeneye and it remained on the spy’s wrist until the special edition release for No Time to Die.
Tudor Black Bay
OK, for all you dedicated watch enthusiasts out there, you may call us on a little bit of a technicality here. We said there would only be four Rolex watches on this list, and since Tudor is a little brother of Rolex, then you may say that the company has five. We believe it is its own entity and therefore should get its own separate mention, so here it is.
The Black Bay is the Tudor version of the Submariner. When the founder of Rolex realized his watches were going to go for a price that only the super-rich could handle, he decided to create a completely new company that was more suited for the casual collector. That was when Tudor arrived. However, Tudor still wanted to be everything that Rolex was and more, so the company created its own version of the classic and it didn’t disappoint.
There you have it, a list of all our favorite icons of the watch world. There are more, there are so many more. New icons are created every day and every time you walk into a watch store you are witnessing history. And every time you strap one to your wrist you become a part of that history.
