Scandinavian Modern: Why This Year Is Oslo’s Time To Shine

A contemporary art, architecture and food scene gives the Norwegian capital a luxurious edge.

By James Stewart 21/08/2022

From a dock at Bjørvika in central Oslo, a man rows into the fjord, following a ribbon of silver water as sunset flames the clouds. His wooden boat is naggingly familiar to anyone from northern Europe: high, pinched bow and stern; as slippery as a fish. In such designs, from this very fjord, the Vikings conquered and traded from Constantinople to Newfoundland.

What’s extraordinary about this image, though, is what’s behind him. The dock bristles with a panoply of double-take architecure. There’s the glass-skinned Deichman Bjørvika public library, its upper story fanned out at an implausible angle. Jostling for space behind is a design book’s worth of office and apartment blocks: cubes, cantilevered rectangles, ziggurats. There’s also the Opera House I’m standing on, beside a young family having a picnic, gaggles of teenagers and tourists taking selfies. The roof slants all the way down to the broad plaza, doubling as a ramp. Around 100 of us are gathered at the top on this chill late-winter dusk to experience one of the finest viewpoints in the city.

And what really astounds about this cutting-edge cityscape is that 20 years ago, the docks of Bjørvika housed nothing more exciting than shipping containers.

There are three things you need to know about Oslo. One is that the Norwegian capital, with a population of 700,000 people, is a pipsqueak by European standards. The second is that Norwegians are no enthusiasts of change. Things aren’t as good as they were, they grumble happily. And third, keep in mind that until 1969, this was a nation of fishermen and farmers.

What changed everything was the discovery of offshore oil. Norway’s trick over the past half-century has been to team its economic bonanza with technological innovation and a highly educated society, a combination that could define liberal democracy.

But in terms of travel, 2022 marks the year when Oslo finally comes of age. Copenhagen and Stockholm are already Scandinavian must-sees. Now the Norwegian capital is out to claim its spot as the most interesting destination in the Nordics.

If any single project supports that claim, it is the National Museum. When it opens on June 11, after 19 years of planning, the institution—four previously distinct museums of art and applied arts united in one organization—will house the largest display of arts in the Nordic region. Those with skin in the game like to point out it will be larger than the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Frank Gehry–designed outpost of the New York icon that turned the off-the-radar Spanish city into an essential stop on a European art tour.

The museum represents the latest element of the ongoing Fjordbyen (Fjord City) urban-renewal scheme launched in the 1980s. There’s no faulting its harborside location. Ferries thrum to nearby islands. Walkers promenade in the sunshine. The light has that sparkling luminescence of the coast. Here you are in the heart of a European capital, yet the mood evokes seaside holidays. It’s rather lovely.

But, gosh, the museum’s big. Clad in gray-green slate (German architectural firm Kleihues + Schuwerk aimed to have a dialogue with both a 14th-century fortress across the harbor and the nearby city hall), its imposing 587,000-square-foot slab walls in one side of the water’s plaza. Illuminated on the roof, a marble-skinned exhibition space will glow at night like a latter-day Acropolis.

“It will make Oslo a real center for arts and culture in North Europe,” marketing director Tord Krogtoft tells Robb Report, adding that it may be the only big national museum to open this year. “It is world news.” He considers a moment, then adds with a smile, “It’s quite unorskt [un-Norwegian], actually.”

Installation of art in the 87 rooms, spread between two floors, is underway. Some of the works, such as an eye-popping mural of rainbow starbursts by American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt—certain to be catnip to Insta influencers—are exuberant, but the decor is restrained. Limestone floors, rich oak doors and window frames of burnished brass lend a patina of age to lofty spaces. Occasionally, sound art—plainchant, say, or bird-song—soundtracks spaces. In all, about 5,000 items will be on display, from paintings to furniture, design and fashion to religious art, most of it Norwegian.

As impressive is that the state coughed up every one of the 6 billion kronor, or roughly $831.5 million, it cost to build. “It’s an issue of culture and ambition as much as money,” Krogtoft says.

Oslo’s other hot museum ticket is Munch. Opened in Bjørvika last year, the world’s largest collection of artist Edvard Munch—and one of the largest museums devoted to any individual artist—is not an easy building to love. Osloites joke that it resembles a shipping container standing on end. Architecture critics have more generously opined that the 13-storey structure, designed by Spaniard Juan Herreros, aptly embodies Munch’s psychologically tortured work. Inside, where curators have a collection of nearly 28,000 works to play with, the expressionist art is stellar, and a bar on the top floor provides unrivaled fjord views. Yes, two versions of The Scream are on-site. The third is at the National Museum, and American financier Leon Black was reported to be the winning bidder on the fourth at Sotheby’s for nearly $120 million in 2012.

Edvard Munch, Inheritance, 1897-99

Edvard Munch, Inheritance, 1897-99 (left), and Girls on the Bridge, 1927, at the Munch. Einar Aslaksen

The aforementioned adjacent Opera House, erected in 2008, offers a manifestly different vibe. It’s not just that acclaimed homegrown architecture firm Snøhetta has dared to evoke an iceberg: glass cliff faces, roofs that shelve into dark water, a mountain’s worth of white marble. It’s also that the roofscape is conceived as an inviting public park.

The vibrant scene in Bjørvika is only part of what’s making Oslo a hugely appealing capital to visit. Having introduced higher tolls and congestion pricing for all but electric cars, the neoclassical center is so calm, so devoid of traffic and hurly-burly, you never quite get used to it. The city is also compact enough that nothing is more than 20 minutes away by metro or tram. Ride for 30 minutes and you’re in pine forest.

Norway, Oslo county, Oslo, Oslo Opera House, Scandinavia, Opera House modern building reflecting in the harbor water at sunrise

Oslo Opera House, designed by homegrown architectural firm Snøhetta. Maurizio Rellini/Sime/EStock Photo

Walk west of the train station—down shopping high street Karl Johans Gate, through a park where guards march stiffly before the royal palace—and you reach Frogner, the city’s most fashionable residential area. Among the borough’s elegant pastel mansions, Sommerro is set to open in September. It’s been hailed as the first neighbourhood hotel in Oslo, but such plaudits actually undersell it—Sommerro is one of Scandinavia’s most interesting launches in years.

Robb Report is the first publication inside its landmark pile, a fusion of Art Deco and functionalist red brick. Dating from 1931, it was previously owned by city-electricity provider Oslo Lysverker, serving as company headquarters but also including a pool and bathhouse in the basement for public use (a typically community-minded Scandinavian gesture). The lobby atrium now features a spectacular Art Deco chandelier that dangles six stories through the centre of a wrought-iron spiral staircase. In what will be a brasserie in the former payment hall (one of four dining spaces), the renovation preserved a 1930s mural by Norwegian artist Per Krohg, a pal of Matisse’s whose work also adorns the United Nations Security Council building in New York.

Nordic Hotels & Resorts is in top form here. The company, known for creating luxury properties, including the Icehotel in Sweden and Denmark’s Villa Copenhagen, pioneered art hotels in Oslo with the Thief in 2013 (the unusual name references the area’s past as both hideout and execution site for smugglers and other rapscallions), followed six years later by Amerikalinjen. The latter, occupying the eponymous shipping line’s neoba-roque headquarters, in which emigrants once booked passage across the Atlantic, is pure Jazz Age glamour.

Dining room at Amerikalinjen

The dining room at Amerikalinjen, a hotel in the namesake shipping line’s onetime headquarters. Francisco Nogueira

In candid moments, managers admit the 231-room Sommerro has been as much of a hassle as you’d expect of a project that has required around 100 meetings with a municipal conservation team since 2019. “It would have been easier to tear down and build from new,” brand director Siri Løining says. Cheaper, too: The project cost about $416 million. “But,” she continues, “it’s much more interesting to keep the stories of the building, its DNA. This is a cultural-heritage project.”

GrecoDeco, the New York–and London-based design firm behind Soho House, has handled styling. The model rooms are an interplay of texture and pattern, Art Deco chic and folksy Nordic touches. So there are walls panelled with cherry-stained ash, stepped ceiling mouldings, tapestry headboards and rose-marble bathrooms. But bespoke hand-knotted rugs have images of storks, and colours are russet and moss, taupe and dusky pink. Superior rooms feature Murano-glass chandeliers. One luxury suite occupies what was once the panelled office of the utility company’s director.

In the basement, in what will be Scandinavia’s largest city-hotel wellness area—“It’s not a spa. This is more for health and mindfulness,” Løining notes—guests will change in restored wooden booths and swim beneath a playful Krohg mosaic that Sommerro has safeguarded. Oslo’s first rooftop pool will be open year-round. (Don’t worry, it’s beside a sauna for winter.) Though Osloites’ use of the rooftop amenities will be limited to the off-season (October through April), they will be welcome to book appointments to the below-ground facilities and join the gym all year. Løining explains: “A lot of developers don’t think about where they are. We’re embracing this building’s unique history, its unique experiences and how it has served local communities.

Junior suite at Sommerro

A junior suite at Sommerro, due to open in September. Lars Petter Pettersen

While the vintage Krohgs celebrate Norway’s artistic legacy, Sommerro is also looking to the contemporary artists and designers invigorating Oslo’s scene today. The hotel commissioned Kaja Dahl to reenvision a stone drinking fountain that once stood in the wellness area and to fashion vases in granite-like porphyry for the guest suites. Her work blurs sculpture and nature, art and craft. In her exhibitions at nearby QB Gallery in Frogner, a ribbon of wood unspools into the air. Polished marble reveals a crystalline core. It’s all somehow unmistakably Scandinavian.

QB manager Mikaela Aschim talks of a growing international clientele for the gallery’s roster. There’s huge investment potential for buyers, she says, because a small national base of collectors keeps prices attractive. A few commercial art galleries, such as Standard (Oslo)Galleri Golsa and OSL Contemporary, have penetrated the international scene, while Galleri Format focuses on contemporary craft and design. Kunstnernes Hus, meanwhile, has been artist-run since 1930 and features exhibitions as well as independent films.

At QB I meet Dahl, who leads me through the backstreets of Frogner: cool corner cafés on beautiful fin de siècle terraces (the area emerged as a summer retreat for Oslo’s elite), cobbles, the fjord winking below. At one point we head into Frogner Park, where over 200 bronze, iron and granite figures by sculptor Gustav Vigeland are on permanent display. Vigeland, who lived and worked nearby in what is now his namesake museum, spent almost 20 years installing the works before his death in 1943. “I love these,” says Dahl. “They’re so soft but in granite.”

Dahl attributes the explosion of Oslo’s art scene to prosperity. “Artists are infiltrating everywhere in Oslo right now,” she says. “It’s a sign of a society that has real luxury, that has the time and wealth to create.” Holding art in high esteem starts at the very top: Norway’s Queen Sonja is a longtime photographer and printmaker who established the Queen Sonja Print Award, a biannual international prize funded by sales of her work.

As is the case in other cities, cool restaurants and cafés are close by the galleries. Sorgenfri, on the elegant street Sorgen-frigaten (the name translates roughly as “No Problems Street”), is a dual-purpose space: polished concrete and pink-marble bar above, gallery and art-fashion boutique below. It’s the sort of madly creative joint every traveller yearns to discover. Outside are two hunks of raw larvikite stone polished into seats—a commission by Dahl.

She believes Oslo’s rise is just beginning.

Outdoor terrace of Sorgenfri

The outdoor terrace of Sorgenfri. Courtesy of Sorgenfri

The dining scene is also showing off a new sophistication. Ask why Oslo is awash with visionary small restaurants preparing New Nordic cuisine and chefs such as Hanne Rutgerson, a bright 30-year-old who apprenticed in a Michelin-star venue, will tell you about stellar Norwegian ingredients, a moneyed, cultured clientele, the ease of a small city. It’s an unbeatable combination. Rutgerson recommends Hot Shop, a neighbourhood bistro in a former sex shop that offers no-menu seasonal dining of real depth and refinement. I can vouch for Festningen, serving classic-modern dishes in the harbour fortress.

Fish soup at Festningen

Fish soup at Festningen. Stian Broch

At her own brasserie, Kastellet, Rutgerson sends out a procession of dazzling small plates: scallop mousse with rhubarb pickle; skrei (Bering Sea cod) with black truffle and white asparagus; duck with cherries and grapefruit. It’s Nordic but bolder, more international, more interesting. Anything but traditional.

Back at Bjørvika, I visit Kok saunas. Fifteen years or so ago, when the fjord was toxic sludge, these floating saunas would have been madness. Now, after a municipal clean-up, you can flit between sauna and seawater, which flirts with 2 degrees Celsius, or about 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Norwegians can’t get enough of this sort of thing, incidentally. It taps into a concept of friluftsliv—strong mental health through outdoor living.

I sit in a tiny superheated cabin among jovial Osloites. We yarn, crack jokes. At intervals we emerge from steaming to plunge into the fjord. Opposite, the Opera House shimmers with a magical glacial beauty. It is a hugely life-affirming experience.

Not bad for a nation of farmers and fishermen.

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How Off-the-Rack Suits Got Sophisticated Enough to Win Over Bespoke Guys

Ready-to-wear tailoring has never been better, and it offers even the most particular dressers a fast, easy platform for experimenting with their look.

By Aleks Cvetkovic 18/02/2025

The world moves fast—and for once, tailoring is moving a little bit faster.

Guys around the globe are rediscovering their love of suits, but many have determined that they can’t stomach the monthslong wait for bespoke. The good news? Ready-to-wear tailoring has never been better.

That’s in part because bespoke makers are beefing up their off-the-rack offerings. Anderson & Sheppard’s shop-in-store at N.Y.C.’s Bergdorf Goodman—the first outpost beyond its London flagship— opened in December with, among other things, a sharp wool-and-cashmere jacket in a delightful shade of teal. Huntsman’s recent fall-winter collection, billed as its most comprehensive assortment yet, offered everything from tuxedos to shooting breeches. Even Leonard Logsdail, Hollywood’s highly esteemed bespoke purveyor, is experimenting with hem-and-go models.

But non-custom tailors are upping the ante, too. Some of the best ready-to-wear suits on the market come from such brands, whose wholly distinctive points of view provide a welcome departure from the rigidity of many bespoke tailors’ house styles. The preponderance and diversity of such high-quality, easy-to-access threads has recast off-the-rack suits as the ultimate way to experiment with your look, not just a way for some to get dressed on the cheap. What’s more, it reflects the new reality that even people who suit up regularly might want to show up looking different on Thursday night than they did on Tuesday morning.

“Life nowadays is much more fluid,” says Chris Modoo, a London-based stylist who once worked as a tailor on Savile Row. “Things happen, invitations appear. You might get an invite for a black-tie party in the South of France for next Saturday.” Ready-to-wear is the obvious solution when you’re in a last-minute menswear quandary, but “it also means you can try new things.”

One maker worth a test-drive is Husbands Paris, founded by Nicolas Gabard, who sees his role as an “archivist of the past.” His look, inspired by stylish men such as Yves Saint Laurent, David Hemmings, and Gary Cooper, is unabashedly striking—think long, fully canvased jackets, broad lapels, structured shoulders, and wide-leg, high-waisted trousers. These wares are made in small workshops in Italy and Portugal, where craftspeople infuse them with high-end details such as hand-sewn buttonholes and silk bar tacks, a form of stitching that reinforces seams and pockets.

Thom Sweeney L.A. store Brett Wood

They’re the kind of touches any menswear enthusiast can appreciate—even if they’re the trees to Gabard’s style forest. Clothes like this are designed as a form of wearable self-assurance, enhancing what Gabard calls a “classically masculine” silhouette: broad shoulders, slim waist, narrow hips.

“Of course, tailoring has to fit well, but it also has to bring something else,” he says. “More and more [Husbands] customers want to be confident, powerful, and sexy in their outfit.”

When you want to look more suave than soigné, turn to the indie Milanese brand Massimo Alba, which is known for its chic casualwear but made its name with easygoing tailoring. “A great suit is not just about the way it fits but about the way it makes you feel,” says the eponymous label’s founder of his relaxed approach. “For me, the essence lies in balance, between structure and softness, elegance and ease. In my opinion, a suit should adapt to the wearer, not the other way around.”

Alba’s creations are cut from plush materials such as corduroy and flannel, featuring natural shoulders and only the lightest of canvasing in the chest, which results in a less-formal look. Which is not to say they aren’t workhorses: Daniel Craig wore one of Alba’s Sloop suits to dodge bullets in 2021’s James Bond film No Time to Die. “I always focus on fabrics that move with the body, details that whisper rather than shout, and cuts that allow for freedom,” Alba adds.

And freedom is precisely what this newfound inventory of great ready-to-wear tailoring provides. Modoo advises some clients to look to bespoke tailors for investment-level garments, such as morning suits, tuxedos, or the dark, serious stuff you might need for a funeral or odd courtroom appearance. “You know you’re going to wear these for 10 or 15 years,” he says. Let the new class of distinctive ready-to-wear step in when you want to try something that just wouldn’t make sense as a bespoke order. “Your pink-velvet blazer for the Christmas party? How well does that need to fit?”

London bespoke tailor Caroline Andrew is one of many who admits ready-to-wear has its place. Courtesy of Caroline Andrew

Fortunately, with so many options available, the fit is easier to dial in. You can expect most high-end operations to make a long list of changes, from ensuring that the seat of the trousers drapes appropriately to cutting working buttonholes on the jacket. For a peerless experience, you can always reach for garments from one of the many talented bespoke tailors offering ready-to-wear. At Thom Sweeney, such clothes are “all influenced by our bespoke cut,” says Thom Whiddett, who cofounded the brand with Luke Sweeney in 2007. “You try on [our ready-to-wear] jacket, and you immediately get a sense of the proportions and shapes that we put into a bespoke garment.”

That alluring sense of near-instant gratification is the point. For some, nothing will ever replace the distinguished feeling of slipping into a bench-made suit—and plenty are willing to wait for it.

“You have to mentally buy into the process and enjoy it,” says Caroline Andrew, a London bespoke specialist. “The journey is just as important as the finished product.” But ready-to-wear sets the time-strapped tailoring enthusiast down a different path: discovering new facets of your personal style at a record pace.

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Tom Brady Wears a Jacob & Co. Watch Decked in Yellow Sapphires to the Super Bowl

The $740,000 Caviar Tourbillon was an opulent choice for the former NFL star.

By 17/02/2025

Tom Brady was on the field tonight at the 59th annual Super Bowl game, and while the retired NFL hero—a seven-time Super Bowl winner (the most of any footballer in history)—wasn’t playing, he came dressed to impress with a $116,400 Jacob & Co. watch on his wrist.

Brady, who is a notable watch collector, recently sold off several of his timepieces at a Sotheby’s auction called “The GOAT Collection: Watches and Treasures from Tom Brady” this past December. Those timepieces ran the gamut from a Rolex Daytona Ref. 6241 to a unique Audemars Piguet Royal Oak with his name spelled out in diamonds across the salmon-colored tapisserie dial. His Rolex Daytona sold for over $1.5 million, and, in total, his auction raked in around $7 million. So, he’s well-equipped for a new watch purchase.

Whether or not he owns the six-figure sapphire stunner or it was a paid spot, the watch certainly stood out against his conservative but immaculately fit gray suit. “Tom Brady is the epitome of excellence, both on and off the field,” said Benjamin Arabov, CEO of Jacob & Co, in a press release sent out by the company shortly after Brady’s appearance. “We’re thrilled to see him wearing two of our most prestigious timepieces on the biggest stage in sports. The Billionaire Mini Ashoka and Caviar Tourbillon embody the precision, luxury, and innovation that define Jacob & Co. We’re honored to have him represent the artistry and craftsmanship behind every piece we create.”

Like much of Brady’s wrist candy, his 44 by 15.8 mm Caviar Tourbillon is not easy to come by. It is limited to just 18 pieces. It features hours, minutes, and a one-minute flying tourbillon in the JCAA43 movement with 216 components and 72 hours of power reserve. The movement itself is set with 338 brilliant-cut diamonds, while a total of 337 yellow sapphires adorn the case and dial. The clasp is decorated with another 18 baguette-cut yellow sapphires, and the crown comes with 14 baguette-cut yellow sapphires and one rose-cut yellow sapphire. As far as gem setting goes, this is one extraordinary piece, but it certainly seemed like a surprising choice for Brady, who was otherwise dressed like he just stepped out of a boardroom or a Ralph Lauren catalog.

Benjamin Arabov, son of Jacob & Co. founder Jacob Arabov, is now the CEO of the company. The 32-year-old recently took to Instagram to post that he was looking for a rebranding agency with experience in visual identity and packaging. As far as marketing goes, however, with Tom Brady, he’s golden.

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This Vintage Rolex Day-Date Has an Ultra-Rare and Coveted ‘Bark’ Design

The ultra-cool piece from Wind Vintage also comes in pristine condition with a desirable patina.

By Paige Reddinger 17/02/2025

Over the last four years there has been a resurgence in interest for 18-karat yellow gold watches. Much of that is due to fatigue over the long-running craze for steel tool watches, but it is also in part due to the rising value of gold (which shows no sign of slowing), rendering these once undesirable pieces increasingly worth collecting. Add to that the fact that, in some niche and stylish circles, unusual bracelet treatments, gem-setting, and interesting dials are becoming increasingly appealing and you have a new wave of watch collecting emerging. Steel sports watches are still the bread and butter for most dealers, but as pockets of interest in more unusual timekeepers, often from younger and fashion-forward collectors, continue to rise we’re seeing some really fun pieces pop up on the market. Case in point: This 1980s Rolex Day-Date in 18-karat yellow gold with a sapphire and diamond dial from Wind Vintage currently available exclusively on The Vault.

It wasn’t that long ago that dealers had a hard time unloading an all-gold gem-set piece. Eric Wind, the notable dealer and founder of Wind Vintage, says five years ago he would have sold this piece for around $23,000 to $28,000. The asking price today? $45,000. “It is very rare,” he tells Robb Report. “I think that was all clearly hand-done. Funnily enough, bark watches were not very desirable in the past. You know, even five to 10 years ago, they were very, very hard to sell. But, over the last three to five years, there’s been such an emergence and interest in jewellery and watches and work like that engraving and other kind of artistic forms that the watches took.” The style of engraving he is referring to on this watch can be seen on the bezel and middle links of the bracelet that is referred to as “bark” for its rough tree-like appearance.

“Bark” engraving on the bezel and bracelet of the Wind Vintage 1980s Rolex Day-Date
Courtesy of Wind Vintage

And while the bracelet is certainly a notable feature that will stand out in a sea of Submariners and Daytonas, the dial is also worth bragging about. Its diamond minutes track and sapphire hour markers are executed in what is known as a “string dial” because it looks like a string of pearls. “They’ve become very popular,” says Wind. “They were very expensive back in the 80s, just because of the cost of the stones, and there are just not many that exist on the planet.” Likewise, Wind says the canary yellow matte dial is not something he comes across often, having only seen a couple of others.

An up-close look at the patina and “bark” engraving on this 1980s Day-Date from Wind Vintage.
Courtesy of Wind Vintage

Part of what makes this watch so hard to find on the market is that pieces like this often didn’t survive past their ’80s heyday. “A lot of times these watches were so undesirable that dealers would replace the bezel inserts and put on fluted inserts, or smooth bezels or fluted bezels and melt down the bracelets or polish the center link so they looked like a standard Day-Date. Those dealers should have learned that what goes around, always comes around. Now with these interesting Rolex watches on the rise, they’ll become even harder to find.

A Wind Vintage 1980s Day-Date with “bark” engraving and a gem-set “string dial”
Courtesy of Wind Vintage

If you’re interested in the piece and want to speak to Wind about it IRL, he will be at Robb Report’s House of Robb event in San Francsico today during the NBA All-Star weekend.

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Soccer Star Kylian Mbappé Is Now an Investor in Watch Marketplace Wristcheck

Just like Jay-Z.
Published on February 7, 2025

By Abby Montanez 11/02/2025

Kylian Mbappé just went from brand ambassador to investor.

The celebrated French footballer, who currently plays for Real Madrid, has taken a stake in luxury watch trading platform Wristcheck, Hypebeast reported lat week.

Off the filed, the 26-year-old soccer star is a known timepiece collector and has served as an ambassador for Swiss marque Hublot since 2018. With this new partnership, the forward joins a growing group of influential backers, including Jay-Z. The rapper and business mogul took an equity stake in the Hong Kong-based company last summer as part of a recent funding round of $7.9 million.

“I’m thrilled to join Wristcheck as an investor through Coalition Capital,” Mbappé said in a press statement. “As a Hublot ambassador and someone passionate about watches and innovation, I see Wristcheck as a platform that truly understands the next generation of collectors. They’re reshaping the watch industry with a forward-thinking approach that blends technology, transparency, and creativity.” Mbappé did not immediately respond to Robb Report‘s request for comment on his new business endeavor.

Kylian Mbappé is an investor in online watch shop Wristcheck.
Tnani Badreddine/DeFodi Images via Getty Images

Launched in 2020 by renowned horophile and Instagram personality Austen Chu, Wristcheck offers a platform for collectors to buy and sell pre-owned watches that have been authenticated by Swiss-trained watchmakers. Since it was founded, the company has raised more than $21.6 million in funding from investors including the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Gobi Partners GBA, and K3 Ventures.

Mbappé, meanwhile, has achieved remarkable success in his soccer career. He won the 2018 FIFA World Cup with France, becoming the youngest player to score in a final since Pelé. At PSG, he has secured multiple Ligue 1 titles and domestic cups. Individually, Mbappé has earned the Ligue 1 Player of the Year award and regularly features in top European scoring charts. And in 2020, he was ranked the world’s highest-paid player, surpassing rivals Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

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Sotheby’s Will Put on the Largest Auction of Breguet Watches in Decades This Fall

To celebrate the revered watchmaking house’s 250th anniversary, the sale includes rare collectibles belonging to living Breguet family members.

By Paige Reddinger 11/02/2025

Interest in Breguet has experienced a quiet resurgence among savvy collectors who appreciate the brand’s deep-rooted watchmaking heritage. This growing enthusiasm will soon take center stage with an upcoming auction that shines a significant spotlight on the storied Maison.

Founded in Paris 250 years ago, Abraham-Louis Breguet was one of the most influential watchmakers in history, best known for inventing the tourbillon and the automatic winding system—along with many other groundbreaking innovations. His legacy continues to inspire modern masters such as F.P. Journe and Philippe Dufour. You can see Breguet’s influence pointedly in pieces like F.P. Journe’s famous Chronomètre à Résonance timepiece, voted one of Robb Report‘s 50 Greatest Watches of All Time.

Now, Sotheby’s has announced “the largest sale of Breguet timepieces in three decades.” Though the auction won’t take place until November, the auction house is already working to build anticipation. In the meantime, it might be wise to brush up on the most coveted Breguet references.

Breguet 1827 Perpétuelle à Tact watch made for King George IV Breguet

What may pique collectors’ interest is the sale is being curated in conjunction with Breguet and Emmanuel Breguet, the vice president and head of patrimony, who happens to be a descendant of the original Monsieur Breguet. So far, the only timekeeper publicly associated (at least visually) with the auction is the 1827 Perpétuelle à Tact watch made for King George IV. Still, it hints at the historic level of pocket watches, wristwatches, and clocks that will be on offer. Abraham-Louis Breguet was a frequent supplier of high-end and state-of-the-art timepieces for royalty, including Marie Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte, and King George III.

Other highlights include an open-faced montre à tact (a watch that replicates the internal hour hand on the cover of the pocket watch via an arrow so that time could be read via touch) with a calendar and moonphase indications that was the inspiration for the Ref. 3330. A pendulette with alarm, perpetual calendar and repeater, and a two-color gold open-faced tourbillon watch is said to be a part of the sale, although no images were provided as of press time. More info on what will be in the sale will come this spring.

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