How Jenna Ortega Ended Up Wearing A 1915 Heuer Rattrapante Pocket Watch To The Met Gala, From The Collection Of One Of The World’s Greatest Heuer Experts
TAG Heuer Enlisted A 22-Year Old Celebrity, a 69-Year Old Collector And A 15-Year Old Watchmaker to Create One Of The Best Watch Red Carpet Moments Ever
The Met Gala, or as it’s officially known, the Costume Institute Benefit, has been called fashion’s biggest night out for a reason. Once a year, the Met Gala, which has been running since 1948, celebrates the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a benefit event organized around a particular theme and dress code (on a couple of occasions the Met Gala has famously confused male guests with a white tie dress code for men, white tie being the most formal dress code but also one you can easily go through your entire life without encountering). This year, the theme for the night was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which celebrated the phenomenon of Black dandyism in culture and design, and the interpretations of the theme and dress code, which was “tailored for you” were as varied as the invitees (there were some 450 guests this year).
As with any major cultural and media event, there were a lot of watches and a lot of very interesting choices – the diversity in watch selections seems to get better and better every year – but one which really stood out if you were a watch enthusiast was the pocket watch worn by Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star Jenna Ortega, at a Met Gala after party, to accent her tuxedo-styled black bodysuit. We’ve gotten used to seeing increasingly interesting things at red carpet events, like vintage Cartier and Rolex watches, some of them pretty inside baseball, but Ortega’s pocket watch was about as inside baseball as it gets: a 1915 rattrapante chronograph pocket watch, from Heuer, and from the collection of Jeff Stein, arguably the biggest vintage Heuer expert and one of the most important Heuer collectors in the world.
Now, these are not worlds that generally intersect, and whether or not you noticed Ortega’s watch the day after depends on how closely you follow Met Gala coverage and how interested you are in pocket watches, but Jeff Stein, who’s the man behind the definitive vintage Heuer collector’s resource, On The Dash, announced on his Instagram that Ortega’s watch came from his collection and his followers were effusive in their enthusiasm.
I missed that post at first but found out shortly thereafter from Taylor Boozan at TAG Heuer, who put the watch and the star together, that she’d reached out to Stein for vintage Heuer pocket watch options, and he gave us all the details of how this highly complex, enthusiast level collector’s item happened to show up on one of the buzziest stars in the world, at the single most important fashion event of the year.
The 69 Year Old Collector
The watch came into Jeff’s collection pretty recently. In February of this year, then-owner Jim Shutts posted a picture of the watch in a Facebook group for vintage Heuer enthusiasts, and Shutts asked Jeff Stein for his opinion on whether or not the watch – which was obviously high grade – was actually from Heuer as there was no marking on the dial. Stein says that the watch seemed to be an exact match to a watch mentioned in Heuer’s 1914 catalog:
“With the assistance of Google, here’s my rough translation of the description from Heuer’s 1914 catalog,” Stein wrote. “‘A true jewel of a complicated watch, rivaling the best products of fine watchmaking; absolutely safe and precise, movement has 17 ligne. 17 rubies or sapphires, very carefully-made escapement, double roller, visible pallet stones, Breguet hairspring, absolutely impeccable functioning mechanism. Height reduced to a minimum. The movement fits into size 12 English and American cases.'”
The watch had the name “Paul Breton” engraved on one of the bridges, and Stein was able to dig up some information about the Paul Breton brand.
“My research on the NAWCC Complicated Watches discussion forum suggests that at this time “Paul Breton” was a brand name, perhaps a small company that sourced movements and cases and assembled them, in this instance for the United States market. Quick and incomplete Google research shows some nice looking pocket watches with “Paul Breton” on the dial, with these watches using a variety of high quality movements (A. Lange, etc.) In this instance, it seems that both the movement and the case were made by Heuer, as both are marked ‘E. Heuer & Co. / Swiss.”
Stein says that the movement obviously needed a service, based on its appearance and also on its performance. “When I received the watch, it was very difficult to wind and set, and the ‘catch-up’ on the rattrapante (which should be instant) was very slow. I had the watch serviced by Owen Berger, the 15-year-old watch maker in Arlington, Virginia.”
The Fifteen Year Old Watchmaker
Owen Berger was someone I’d never heard of before, and when Stein said “15-year old-watchmaker” I just assumed he’d meant that Berger had been a watchmaker for fifteen years. As it turns out, Berger is in fact fifteen years old, has been a watch enthusiast for several years, counts among his mentors Eric Wind of Wind Vintage and the famous Breitling expert (and current historian and advisor to Breitling) Fred Mandelbaum, and seems to have an almost uncanny knack for working on watches, even complicated ones.
Stein met Berger in Atlanta, after Berger had serviced a vintage Heuer Chronomatic for him which came back in excellent working order, “And then a few weeks later,” said Stein,”he came down to Atlanta, he and his father. His father was here for a business meeting, so Owen came along with him, and we spent probably five hours looking through old Heuers and everything, these split second timers and chronographs and just all kinds of dashboard timers, everything.
And I was very impressed with his, I mean, he could handle a watch and tell you what was going on with it by winding, setting, operating it, and just incredibly sophisticated questions and stuff, insights into the way different movements were built. And so anyway, he ended up taking that gold split second back home with him because I had just received it from the February purchase.”
He’s basically able to take apart even a watch that he’s never seen before, clean it, service it, and put it back together.”
Stein says that Berger pointed out some interesting characteristics of the watch, in particular that in keeping with the practice at the time, the column wheel for the rattrapante hand is on the dial side of the movement rather than on the movement side [top plate side].
In a comment to Stein, Berger remarked, “A little side note about the architecture: Perhaps the most interesting thing about the movement to me is that it is indirectly driven, meaning that there is no center wheel like you would find in a directly driven movement. Instead, it is more similar to many modern ETA movements that have an off-center “second wheel” that drives a separate cannon pinion. In other words, it is a very old movement with a few modern elements. Nowadays the design is used to make watches thinner, but I imagine they did it here to make room for the central chronograph parts.”
Stein received the watch back in mid-April and found it running very well, at an average daily rate of +5 seconds per day. Only five days later, he heard from Taylor Boozan, the head of PR and celebrity relationships at TAG Heuer North America.
The 22 Year Old Star
Boozan was of course familiar with On The Dash and obviously came to the right person in her search for a vintage Heuer pocket watch. “Taylor told me,” he said, “that the request was for Jenna Ortega, for the Met Gala, and she sent me a photo showing the basic ‘look’ that Jenna Ortega would have for the Met Gala – tuxedo style coat and vest, with pocket watch worn on a long chain, as if the chain went around her neck, with the watch hanging at her waist.”
Stein gave her four possibilities – three chronographs, in stainless steel, and the 14k gold-cased rattrapante. Stein says, “This timepiece was made by Ed. Heuer & Co. (as indicated by marks on the case and movement), but was from the period before most watch companies began putting their names on the dials. Being 14 karat gold, and with the split-second feature, this would have been among the most expensive timepieces in the Heuer catalog, and was the ultimate timepiece for the sports enthusiast.
“It just so happened, if Taylor had called a pocket watch collector, [my friend] John Cote might have 200 pocket watches. And if she had said, ‘Can you send me a gold pocket watch?’ It might’ve been an Illinois or a Hamilton or a normal pocket watch, but my supply of pocket watches is rather limited, and it’s these split second chronos and normal pocket chronos as well. But this was the only gold one that I had, and that’s how it ended up being in the shipment.”
Stein says, “I’m a watch collector, and know relatively little about ‘fashion’ but to me Jenna Ortega’s choice of the two outfits – the ‘Ruler Dress’ for the Gala itself (Balmain) and the tuxedo-style bodysuit for the afterparties – was amazing. These outfits seemed perfect with the Met Gala theme of ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ and the dress code, ‘Tailored for You.’
“Her sleeves were very long (part of the “tailored” look, along with the very high, exaggerated shoulders), and would have covered any wristwatch. And of course, there are those who say you musn’t wear a wristwatch with a tuxedo!
“The gold watch on the gold chain was so clean and simple, perfect with the gold buttons on the cuffs of her jacket and the gold flower broach on the opposite-side lapel.
“While there are numerous pocket gold pocket watches that would have provided the same look from a distance, wearing the rattrapante chronograph went above and beyond, and was consistent with the “dandyism” theme of black tailoring. This is the type of complicated, well-finished watch that the gentleman (or dandy) from the 1910s / 20s would have worn to the horse races.”
Everybody comes at a story like this from different directions but I think it’s remarkable that this particular watch, after 110 years, is still writing new chapters in its history. The juxtaposition of two young and promising stars in their respective fields – watchmaking and acting – along with the expertise of one of vintage watch collecting’s most focused and knowledgable experts, aided and abetted by a TAG Heuer PR officer who took the trouble to go the extra mile and knew who to reach out to, gave us all a brief but delightful look at a watch that might otherwise have remained in relative obscurity, and it also shows that that bane of self-described serious watch lovers – red carpet watch placement – doesn’t have to be a vapid exercise in transactional product placement. If it’s done with thought and care there can be a much more interesting payoff. I’m more familiar with Wednesday Addams from the old New Yorker cartoons than from the series that put Jenna Ortega on the map, but I’m pretty sure that she’d be a pocket watch gal.
Thanks to Jeff Stein and Taylor Boozan for deep background on the watch, assistance with images, and connecting the dots on how this vintage Heuer got where it went. The 1916 Company is an authorized retailer for TAG Heuer.