{"id":421234,"date":"2025-09-13T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/421234\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:52:11","slug":"leonardo-dicaprio-wore-rolexs-most-exciting-release-of-the-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/421234\/","title":{"rendered":"Leonardo DiCaprio Wore Rolex’s Most Exciting Release of the Decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

A timepiece that no one saw coming quickly became the hottest horological object on the planet when it debuted on a random summer\u2019s day in June of 2023<\/a>. Made in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it mixed features from vintage references with all the tech\u2014and white gold\u2014of a modern piece. In short, collectors went absolutely nuts for it, with numbers on the secondary market quickly climbing to several multiples of its $51,400 price tag. And when it was quietly discontinued after roughly only 10 months? Pfffft. Suddenly, it seemed like we might have a 21st-century equivalent of the \u201cPaul Newman\u201d<\/a> on our hands. (Rolex, for its part, quietly\u2014and immediately\u2014replaced the white-gold original with an equally desirable yellow-gold version<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

David Jon\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Of course, if your last name is \u201cDiCaprio\u201d and you\u2019re a Rolex Testimonee<\/a>\u2014the Crown\u2019s term for an ambassador\u2014you have access to such watches. But it\u2019s not just the Crown\u2019s approved partners that quickly moved to snap up the the \u201cLe Mans\u201d Daytona. In both its white and yellow-gold versions, the new Daytona landed on the wrists of Kevin Hart<\/a>, LeBron James<\/a>, Ed Sheeran, Michael Jordan<\/a>, and Roger Federer<\/a>. Standing for a photocall at the debut of his latest Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>-directed film, One Battle After Another, DiCaprio once again strapped on the white-gold Daytona<\/a>\u2014a watch ostensibly designed for racing that looks just as much at home when worn casually with a suit and no tie.<\/p>\n

Housed in a 40-mm white gold Oyster case with screw-down pushers, the \u201cLe Mans\u201d Daytona boasts several noteworthy features. Let\u2019s start our tour with the bezel, which features a tachymeter scale with the \u201c100\u201d indication done up in red, a nod to both Le Man\u2019s centennial as well as to vintage Daytonas<\/a> and their red dial text. This color is echoed on the dial with red \u201cDaytona\u201d text, but then things get decidedly more vintage-inspired. If you look closely at the chronograph registers, you\u2019ll realize the typography echoes that of \u201cexotic\u201d references referred to as \u201cPaul Newman\u201d Daytona<\/a>, with the quirky, idiosyncratic Arabic and square-shaped indices seen on that famed actor\u2019s ref. 6239. Produced by Singer, these dials were fitted to several different hand-wound Daytonas<\/a>\u2014many of which are said to have languished on shelves before they became popular in the 1980s and \u201890s.<\/p>\n

The \u201creverse panda\u201d color scheme\u2014white totalizers against a black background\u2014is yet another callout to vintage references. But besides small aesthetic touches, Rolex went the extra mile and gave this watch a brand-new, modified movement, the cal. 4132. Why debut a modified engine so soon after the debut of 2023\u2019s crop of new references at Watches and Wonders<\/a>? Look at the hour counter on the dial and you\u2019ll realize it measures not the typical 12 hours, but 24 in honor of the day-long race. Pretty neat, eh?<\/p>\n

Prices on the secondary market for this ultra-rare piece are currently nearly a quarter-million bucks. But on DiCaprio\u2019s wrist, it looks like the full million.<\/p>\n

NBC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

NBC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander\u2019s Rolex Cosmograph Daytona \u201cBarbie\u201d<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> showed up to The Tonight Show with a strong wrist game: Poking out from beneath his cuff was the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona<\/a> \u201cBarbie,\u201d an off-catalog piece that\u2019s only allocated to the Crown\u2019s most important clients. (Think Lionel Messi<\/a>, Mark Wahlberg<\/a>, etc. Clearly, Gilgeous-Alexander\u2019s in good company.) With its 18K yellow gold, diamond-set case; pink sapphire-set bezel; and bright pink dial with pink sapphire indices, this piece is said to exist in only a handful of examples\u2014meaning its (theoretical) price would be several times that of the aforementioned \u201cLe Mans\u201d Daytona<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ARASH OSKOOIE\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Miles Teller\u2019s IWC Portugieser Automatic 40<\/p>\n

Appearing at the premiere of his new A24 film Eternity, Miles Teller<\/a> rocked the IWC Portugieser Automatic 40, a modern take on a timepiece that the Schaffhausen-based brand debuted in the 1930s<\/a>\u2014supposedly at the request of two Portuguese businessmen who desired a larger wristwatch than what was then fashionable. Housed in a 40-mm stainless steel case without crown guards and with a thin, smooth bezel, it takes clear inspiration from pocket watches. This is even more evident when considering the dial, which is designed with a railroad minute track, a subsidiary seconds register above 6 o\u2019clock, and a thin feuille handset and matching Arabic indices. The Portugieser has a classic, dressy appeal that transcends any particular era.<\/p>\n

Mathew Tsang<\/p>\n

Ryan Reynolds\u2019 Rolex Oyster Perpetual \u201cCelebration\u201d Dial<\/p>\n

At TIFF, Ryan Reynolds<\/a> wore another discontinued and highly coveted Rolex: the Oyster Perpetual \u201cCelebration\u201d Dial<\/a>. Available at launch in several sizes, the \u201cCelebration\u201d dial<\/a> was unusual for not only its bright colors, but its mix of of them: If you consider the sunny crop OPs that dropped beginning in 2020, you\u2019ll realize that Rolex brought all those colors together in order to form the dial of this cheery watch. These days, when you can track one down on the secondary market, they trade for a pretty penny: 41-mm versions are well over $20K.<\/p>\n

Tommaso Boddi\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Daniel Craig\u2019s Omega Seamaster 120<\/p>\n

For the vintage heads out there, there was no horological news more relevant this week than Daniel Craig<\/a> appearing at the TIFF premiere of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery in a vintage, blue-dialed Omega Seamaster 120<\/a>. Unlike the classic Seamaster 300<\/a>, this version is housed in a chunky C-shaped case without crown guards that comes paired to an Oyster-like steel bracelet. The fully hashed bezel insert and \u201cgladiator\u201d handset are clearly reminiscent of mil-spec Seamaster 300s; however, the abundant tritium lume speaks to the late \u201860s\/early \u201870s era in which it was made. Could Omega<\/a> be about to reissue this oft-forgotten model? We wouldn\u2019t put it past them\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A timepiece that no one saw coming quickly became the hottest horological object on the planet when it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,77,33878,39273,4714,16,15,61080,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-421234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-leonardo-dicaprio","11":"tag-rolex","12":"tag-textbelowcentergridwidth","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-watches","16":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115197322873849373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}