Early on January 10, Virgil Abloh showed off a ridiculous emerald-set Patek Phillipe Nautilus reference 5726 on his Instagram. The watch features baguette-set emeralds in the bezel, a pave dial with more emeralds, and even more emeralds set into the Nautilus’ integrated bracelet. Underneath that, the Ref. 5726, which Patek manufactures in stainless steel, has been turned a matte black in the style of watch customizer Mad Paris. In fact, we’ve seen Virgil wearing his own blacked-out Nautilus Ref. 5726 from Mad Paris before; this one just adds a whole bunch of emeralds on top.
Finally, Virgil tagged Drake in his post, seeming to insinuate the watch was for @champagnepapi. Drake seemed to confirm this later, soon posting the same photo of the watch to his feed. Of course, you can go to the comments of either post if you’d like to see a bunch of hot takes on the watch (for example, @amsterdamvintagewatches: “That is a painfully poor execution of a baguette Emerald after-market set 5726”). In a bit of omnichannel marketing, Drake also dropped a couple lines seeming to reference the watch on his new track with Future, “Life is Good”, rapping: “Virgil got a Patek on my wrist goin’ nuts … Virgil got the Patek on my wrist doin’ back flips.”
A Patek Ref. 5726 runs $45,930, if you can find one at retail. You’ll find them on the secondary market often trading for a hefty multiple of that. That leaves some collectors understandably frustrated when they see a couple guys like Virgil and Drake with way too much money ruin what was otherwise a perfectly good annual calendar Nautilus in stainless steel. But hey, if Champagne Papi thinks it looks cool, I’m sure others will too. And despite his recent hiatus from fashion, Virgil is still one of the foremost tastemaker others look to for what’s hot.