Thinking Outside the Oyster: Rolex Dress Watches from King Midas to Cellini to Perpetual 1908

Rolex surprised more than a few media prognosticators and watch-industry pundits when it introduced the Perpetual 1908 at Watches & Wonders 2023 in Geneva. For a Swiss watch brand that has become nearly synonymous with its luxury sport watches — all with the shared element of the company’s genre-defining, waterproof Oyster case — an unmistakably dressy gents’ watch with an elegant, vintage-look dial and a case that you’d avoid wearing in the shower, much less for a diving expedition, was an outlier that few would have expected. When Rolex introduced another version of the 1908 at the following year’s Geneva exhibition, in an even-more luxurious platinum case and a guilloché-motif ice-blue dial — and that watch became one of the toasts of the entire show — anyone who may have dismissed the new model as a noble, short-term experiment, or an attempt to engage a small, niche demographic, needed to reassess. 

Rolex is clearly not resting on the considerable laurels of its tool-derived Oyster Perpetual models — the Submariner, GMT-Master, and Cosmograph Daytona foremost among them — and has signaled a commitment to making unmistakably elegant dress watches, in vintage-influenced styles that go beyond the tried-and-true formula of the Datejust and Day-Date, two dress models in the Oyster collection whose aesthetics are more or less etched in stone at this point. The 1908 might even herald a return to style elements that are regarded as decidedly un-Rolex in the modern era but nevertheless have an honored place in the brand’s rich history — like non-round cases, Art Deco fonts and decorative flourishes, and creative, non-analog complications. But before speculating on where this young collection with an old soul is going, perhaps it’s worth taking a look at what came before it — and why the Perpetual 1908 is actually the culmination of nearly a century of Rolex attempts to forge an identity for its dress watches that is as enduring and iconic as those of its sport-luxury models.

Rolex Prince: Art Deco for Doctors

As early as 1928, Rolex was offering a men’s dress watch with a curved rectangular case and a dual-display figure-eight dial with hours and minutes in one subdial and running seconds in another subdial directly below it. Powered by a rectangular-shaped, manually wound movement by Aegler, the Rolex Prince is regarded as one of the watch industry’s foremost examples of the Art Deco style that impacted nearly every area of product and architectural design in that era. Marketed at the time as “The Watch for Men of Distinction,” the Rolex Prince also became known as the “doctor’s watch” because of its prominent small-seconds display, which, in those days before wristwatch chronographs with pulsimeter scales, was considered ideal for measuring a patient’s heart rate.

Rolex Prince Jump Hour (photo: Matthew Bain)

In 1930 came the Prince Jump Hour, perhaps the earliest wristwatch to use a digital display of the hour — via a 12-numeral disk displayed in an aperture at 12 o’clock — in concert with analog hands for the minutes and seconds. The Prince, in its various incarnations, was an early success for Rolex, which had yet to build a collection around its Oyster case and the tool watches that it would enable. The model’s popularity did not outlast the heyday of the Art Deco movement, however: it was discontinued in 1940 and would not be seen again in any form for more than half a century.

King Midas: Gérald Genta Goes for Gold

Rolex Cellini King Midas (photo: Rolex Passion Market)

A figure familiar to historically savvy watch enthusiasts made his milestone contribution to the Rolex dress-watch timeline in 1964. Gérald Genta, an iconoclastic and independent watch designer, was still years away from conceiving his most celebrated brainchildren — the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus — when he developed the blocky, asymmetrical, solid-gold King Midas timepiece for Rolex. The King Midas, named for the monarch in Greek mythology whose touch could turn anything to gold, was unlike any Rolex watch seen before or since. Its pentagonal case and thick, single-link integrated bracelet was forged from a single block of yellow or white gold; at a weight between 150 and 200 grams it was the heaviest Rolex on the market at the time as well as the most expensive. Greek mythological and architectural elements exerted their influence on the design, with the case silhouette resembling the roof of the Parthenon and the bracelet evoking the look of the ancient temple’s columns. The original references even spelled out the name “MIDAS” on the dial in Greek letters and placed the crown on the left side of the case — because it was the King’s left hand that could turn objects to gold. Unusual for the time, King Midas watches were produced in limited, numbered editions, the first being the Ref. 9630, which contained the hand-wound Caliber 650, outsourced from Piaget, and was limited to 1,000 pieces. Rolex continued making the King Midas (and a smaller-cased ladies’ “Queen Midas”) through the early 1980s, eventually shifting to the in-house Calibers 1600 and 1601.

Christopher Lee as Bond villain Francisco Scaramanga

While not nearly as renowned in pop culture as the Submariner, worn by Sean Connery as James Bond, or the Daytona, worn and famously owned by actor and racing driver Paul Newman, the Rolex King Midas can claim some celebrity status and even some Bond-film cred of its own. Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” owned a King Midas, gifted to him in 1970, which today is on display at Graceland in Memphis. (Elvis, most famous among watch enthusiasts today for his association with the Hamilton Ventura, seemed to have a thing for asymmetrical watches.) Hollywood legend John Wayne wore one, which sold at auction in 2011, several decades after the actor’s death. And actor Christopher Lee was spotted wearing a King Midas as the titular villain in 1974’s “The Man With the Golden Gun,” opposite Roger Moore as James Bond.

Cellini: Italian Inspiration Shapes the Future

Both the Prince of the 1930s and the King Midas of the 1960s are now considered to be progenitors of the collection that up until very recently represented Rolex’s most sustained and diversified effort in the arena of refined, elegant dress watches, the Cellini. Developed in the wake of the success of “professional” Oyster watches like the Submariner, GMT-Master, and Explorer, and described as being the first Rolex models designed with aesthetics, rather than functionality, foremost in mind, Cellini watches were envisioned as purpose-built dress watches to supplement the purpose-built (but still luxurious) tool watches that had become the brand’s bread and butter. Named after the legendary Florentine goldsmith and sculptor Bienvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the Cellini series was conceived by Rolex marketing director Rene-Paul Jeanneret, who was a close confidant of Rolex’s founder Hans Wilsdorf and had been instrumental in the success of many of the aforementioned Oyster Perpetual classics. Unlike those watch families, however, and the others that made up the portfolio, Cellini watches — the first of which began appearing on the market in the 1960s — would encompass a wide range of styles and complications, with their key commonalities being stylish sophistication, rather than robustness, at the core of their design; as they were not aimed at scuba divers, pilots, racing drivers, and yachtsmen, they also didn’t require waterproof cases or, in Rolex's estimation, self-winding "perpetual" movements.

Rolex Cellini Danaos (photo: Analog:Shift)

The trailblazing King Midas was quickly folded into the line, becoming the Cellini King Midas, and a series of notable models followed throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, including the Cellini Octagonal, with an eight-sided case and Roman numerals; interestingly, Genta, who is renowned for his use of the octagon in watch designs, apparently was not associated with this model. Softer but still unconventional geometric shapes started appearing in the collection in the 1990s, like the Cellini Danaos, which had a rounded, cushion-shaped gold case and a manual-winding 1602 movement, and the Cellini Cestello, which offered a sportier look, with a rounded bezel on a barrel-shaped case, almost like a proto-Big Bang. Both these and other ‘90s Cellinis sported some design elements of the fondly remembered “Bubbleback” Rolex models of the 1930s  and ‘40s.

Rolex Cellini Prince models

With the new millennium came the somewhat awkwardly named but historically noteworthy Cellinium models, which were the first Cellini models whose cases were made exclusively in platinum and whose case’s dimensions were the largest yet for the understated series — 38mm, up from the 35mm that was the standard for its round-cased predecessors. In 2005, Rolex finally resurrected its Art Deco-era icon, the Prince, as the Cellini Prince, which briefly ushered curvilinear and rectangular gold cases back into the series. The watch, as per the times, was significantly larger than its 1920s ancestor, at 47mm x 28mm, but in most other respects was a faithful throwback to the vintage “doctor’s watch,” with two stacked subdials, framed by classical guilloché and clous de Paris textured motifs. The movement, Caliber 7040, was still manually wound like its predecessors, but offered enhancements like a 70-hour power reserve, Rolex’s proprietary Paraflex shock absorbers, and a COSC chronometer certification.

Cellini Time, Date, Dual Time and Moonphase: The Final Phase 

l-r: Rolex Cellini Time, Cellini Date, and Cellini Dual Time

A major streamlining of the Cellini series was one of the Crown’s major initiatives for 2014. Finally, Rolex began following the lead of its Professional families and imposed a consistent set of aesthetic and technical criteria on the formerly diverse collection. All the cases from this point were round, made of precious metal (initially either 18k white gold or Rolex’s proprietary, pink-tinted Everose gold alloy), and measuring 39mm in diameter. Each case had a two-tiered bezel with elegant coin-edge-style fluting and was mounted on an alligator leather strap — no bracelets need apply. The dials were either lacquered or embellished with a “rayon flamme de la gloire” guilloché pattern and hosted a set of faceted Dauphine hands and thin elongated hour markers and Roman numerals. Most notably, the 2014 models were the first generation of Cellinis to all feature automatic rather than manually wound movements — and at the time, they were the only Rolex watches where those movements could be seen, the sapphire exhibition caseback being then, as now, a rarity for the brand. The revamped series consisted of the Cellini Time, a three-handed watch with no date display; the Cellini Date, with an analog-date subdial at 3 o’clock; and the Cellini Dual Time, whose 6 o’clock subdial combined a 12-hour second time zone indication with a moon-phase. 

Perhaps the most memorable addition to the 21st-Century Cellini collection came along, somewhat quietly, in 2017, boasting a horological complication that had been absent from the Crown’s portfolio since the 1950s. The Cellini Moonphase, in the now-recognizable 39mm Everose gold case with double-domed, fluted bezel, featured an in-house movement with a patented, astronomical moon-phase module with an accuracy of 122 years. A large aperture at 6 o’clock on the white lacquered dial revealed a blue-enamel disk, with a “full moon” in rhodium-plated meteorite and a “new moon” with a thin silver ring surrounding a field of stars, along with a pointer that indicates the correct phase of the moon as the disk cycles through the lunar phases. The dial also features an analog date, with a crescent-tipped blued hand pointing to a 31-day scale printed around the dial’s perimeter.

Rolex Cellini Moonphase

The Cellini Moonphase proved to have more staying power than its siblings in the collection, most of which were discontinued by 2022. As the only watch in the entire Rolex catalog with a moon-phase, the remaining Cellini model hung on for another year before it was also (ahem) phased out. It’s anyone’s guess as to why the modern-day Rolex Cellini couldn’t break through to something resembling the mainstream popularity of Rolex’s Oyster Perpetual models. A poll of watch industry observers would likely conclude it had something to do with the blurring of lines between sport and luxury in today’s high-end watch industry and Rolex’s market-driven focus on its most profitable models. Or was the Cellini simply another casualty of the creeping influence of “business casual” and the increased scarcity of the jackets-required venues and dressy, black-tie events that were the model’s natural habitat? In any case, reports of the demise of Rolex's "purpose-built dress watches" proved to be highly exaggerated, as the retiring of the final Cellini models occurred simultaneously with the launch of a similar but distinctively modern successor in the Perpetual 1908. 

Forward to the Past: Perpetual 1908

The numeral in the new collection’s name pays tribute to the year 1908, when Hans Wilsdorf renamed Wilsdorf & Davis, the London watchmaking firm he’d founded with his partner, as the Rolex Watch Company Ltd. and registered it in Geneva, where it has been based ever since. Accompanying that milestone date — the birth year of Rolex, in essence — the term “Perpetual” refers to the self-winding movements Inside the watches, probably the most substantial difference between this new series and the Cellini, many of which had used manually wound movements up until the most recent versions. The absence of “Oyster” before “Perpetual” denotes that the 1908 models, like their immediate predecessors, will continue to eschew the waterproof Oyster cases of the professional models as well as the dressier Day-Date and Datejust.

Other traditions maintained from the Cellini family are the 39mm cases made exclusively of precious metals, all with sapphire exhibition casebacks offering a view of the movements, still a unique element among Rolex product families; and the luxurious alligator leather straps upon which those cases are mounted. The cases are water-resistant to a respectable but not overly robust 50 meters. Rolex created a new movement for the 1908 models, the self-winding Caliber 7140, whose technical attributes include a 66-hour power reserve, a 4-Hz frequency, an antimagnetic hairspring made of Syloxi, Rolex's proprietary silicon material, and the brand's super-efficient Chronergy escapement. It also boasts Rolex's Superlative Chronometer certification, speaking to its elite-level accuracy of +/- 2 seconds daily, and a host of decorative finished that can be seen through the exhibition back.

While Rolex wasn’t actually making this style of watch yet in its inaugural year of 1908 (the vintage piece that most influenced this model hails from 1931), the new models display an array of elegant details that are very characteristic of the watchmaker’s early 20th-century timepieces. The smoothly rounded case has a bezel with a domed top edge and finely fluted sides, along with curved, chamfered lugs. The dial’s distinguishing features include applied Arabic numerals at 3, 9, and 12; faceted indexes at the remaining hour positions; an hour hand with a circle tip and a sword-shaped minute hand; and a small seconds subdial at 6 o'clock. The first models in the series from 2023 featured white-gold and yellow gold cases with either a black or white dial.

The follow-up in 2024, as referenced back at the beginning of this article, introduced platinum into the fold as a case material, as well as a dazzling new ice-blue dial with a hand-applied, rosette-motif guilloché texture paired with a crimped, filet sauté pattern for the minute track. The combination of platinum with the ice-blue colorway, first unveiled in 2013 on a special anniversary edition of the Cosmograph Daytona, is reserved by Rolex for its most exclusive pieces and used sparingly enough to always draw the attention of aficionados and collectors. Its application in only the second year, and third release, of this new collection would seem to indicate that Rolex expects big things from the Perpetual 1908 in the years to come; we in the watch-centric media will be eagerly munching our proverbial popcorn from our front-row seats.