I Outflexed a Roomful of Celebrities with Jaeger-LeCoultre’s $66,000 Pink-Gold Reverso

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It’s not every day that you find yourself in a room packed with famous people—and even less common to feel like you actually have a leg up on all those A-listers as far as wristwear goes. However, that was the case last Thursday night, when I worked the red carpet at the GQ Men of the Year party while wearing Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new Reverso Tribute Chronograph.

Being the watch editor at GQ comes with a lot of perks—chief among them, of course, the chance to take just-released grails like the $66,000 pink-gold Reverso out for a spin. One of the most underrated aspects of my job, though, is that many of the people I come into contact with ask me about the watch I’m wearing. An invitation to blab on about my watch? That’s the stuff diehard collectors dream about. Lo and behold, upon my arrival at the party, a few of my colleagues were immediately curious about my choice of wristwear for our biggest event of the year. The Reverso did not disappoint.

Double denim and the Reverso

Thriving under the bright lights

The Reverso is like a sexy and expensive magic trick. I could have boasted to my coworkers about the new Reverso Tribute’s Calibre 860 movement—visible on one side of the watch with a skeletonized dial, featuring intricate Côtes de Genève finishing—or the sharp design on the reverse side with a laser-engraved horizontal bar. But the Reverso doesn’t require any technical knowledge to induce awe. The watch is a crowd-pleaser at heart: This is the original reversible watch we’re talking about! The small herd of editors marveled as I flipped it back and forth, satisfyingly clicking it back into place. It’s a simple, primitive pleasure, no doubt, but one we shouldn’t take for granted: How many watches give you two faces for the price of one?

With super-complicated haute horologie on one side and a more classic-looking dial on the other, my Reverso took full advantage of its duality. I always imagined that if I ever owned a Reverso, I’d spend most of the time with it flipped to the plainer side—I am but a humble and simple man. In practice, however, doing so would really defeat the particular wow factor of this watch. While JLC has released a pink-gold Reverso before, what makes this new piece so special is that everything is made out of the precious metal. It’s not just the case, like on last year’s release—the movement itself is built from glimmering pink gold. The watch is outrageously pretty in person, like a supercar with a translucent chassis that allows you to see the engine underneath. If I’m going to wear a watch this spectacular, I want to see the pink-gold machinery at work.

Jaeger-LeCoultre has come up with increasingly inventive ways to capitalize on the potential of a two-sided watch. The Reverso was originally made in 1931 for polo players who would flip the watch’s dial from the timekeeping side to one with a hard shell to protect the watch from thwacking mallets and thwacked balls. JLC recently issued a watch that mimics that original design’s more diminutive proportions (a size more in line with today’s vintage-informed trends). But increasingly, the brand has launched larger, more luxurious pieces like the one I took for a test drive—or even more elaborate versions that boast four faces and 11 complications.

There is certainly a tradeoff when you stack the Reverso with complications. Clocking in at 49.4 mm long and 29.9 mm wide, the new Tribute Chronograph I wore was a little beefier than I expected; it was similar in size to an overstuffed restaurant matchbook. That’s a small price to pay for a watch with this kind of versatility. What I did like was the heft of this piece—the solid pink gold makes it especially substantial. I put it on the scale at home and it came in at 120 grams—compare that to my titanium Tudor Pelagos 39 that, including the bracelet, weighs just 104 grams!

I’ve always felt that the Reverso was slightly underrated, and wrote as much in my column in GQ’s November issue. As luxury-sport pieces continue to dominate in 2024, the Reverso can claim that it kicked off the trend in its own way close to a century ago. This was the first time I’ve ever gotten extended time with the model—I got started at the highest of ends with the full pink-gold version—and it was about as fun as I’d always imagined. As a world-class fiddler, I found myself constantly flipping the watch back and forth, turning it into the most expensive fidget spinner ever made. As far as party companions go, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Chronograph is tough to beat.