Daniel Miller | (TNS) Los Angeles Times
Two hundred grams of gold. 122 diamonds. A $100,000 price tag. And “TRUMP” on the dial.
Flashy, yes, but the most notable feature in a mechanical wristwatch debuted by former President Donald Trump last week may be the anachronistic technology encasing its beating heart: a tourbillon.
The device, for which the watch is named, is an 18th century invention meant to improve accuracy by counteracting the effects of gravity on a watch’s mechanism. It does so by suspending timekeeping components in a rotating cage.
While visually interesting — the Trump watch’s tourbillon is displayed via a cutout on its dial — it is no longer functionally necessary, owing to advances in watchmaking.
And yet, timepieces with tourbillons have, for years, been signifiers of status and success. Eminent Swiss brands such as Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet offer watches with tourbillons that cost upward of $250,000. They’ve even eased their way into the pop culture lexicon, getting name-checked in hip-hop songs, such as Disciple Zachariah’s “Tourbillon,” which includes a lyric about being “mesmerized by the mechanism.”
Trump, who this year alone has unveiled a $59.99 Bible, $399 shoes and $100 collectible coins, said in a video Thursday that “this isn’t just any watch; it is one of the best watches made.”
But among watch cognoscenti, the timepiece attracted instant opprobrium. In Instagram posts, WhatsApp group chats and TikTok videos, influential voices savaged the solid-gold watch over its appearance and cost. Trump said only 147 will be made in two hues of gold.
In one online clip, Mike Nouveau, a vintage-watch dealer with a large online presence, calculated the value of some of the watch’s parts, a tally far below its retail price. He said the timepiece featured an “off-the-shelf” tourbillon that costs less than $3,000.
Several industry experts said including a tourbillon in Trump’s watch made sense.
“It is a beautiful mechanical parallel to Trump — here is a person who whirls around, and is shiny and flashy, but has no function or purpose and is entirely anachronistic in how he sees the world,” said Phil Toledano, co-founder of the watch brand Toledano & Chan.
It still may sell, said Kevin O’Dell, a rare-watch dealer based in the Washington area: “There are wealthy retirees — guys who live in Florida, they’ve got a few million in the bank — and they just love Trump. It’s kind of the same person who buys a Rolex or Patek because it’s a name, it’s a flex.”
Little is known about the maker of the timepiece. A website for Trump Watches — which also lists a sub-$1,000 offering called the Fighter — says the timekeepers are not “designed, manufactured, distributed or sold” by the former president or the Trump Organization.
The Trump campaign referred The Times to his company, which did not respond to requests for comment. Emails sent to an address listed on the Trump Watches site were not returned.
Long a cloistered craft, watchmaking has undergone a period of democratization over the last decade or so. Emerging technologies have allowed more makers to produce timepieces whose intricacies were once solely the province of a few august firms.
The tourbillon exemplifies the shift. Whereas watches featuring them might have once commanded six figures, companies including TAG Heuer now offer versions that are priced below $25,000. Those made in China are even less dear: One from Seagull Watch Co. costs about $1,700.
“Any company can order a tourbillon off the shelf and stick it in their watch,” Nouveau told The Times.
A ‘whirlwind’
Tourbillon is the French word for “whirlwind,” a fitting name for a device that lends a kinetic quality to the otherwise sober endeavor of timekeeping.
Abraham-Louis Breguet, widely considered the greatest watchmaker of all time, invented the tourbillon around 1795 and his namesake company still makes them: its Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Automatique 5367, for example, costs more than $160,000.
But with comparably low-priced offerings from other brands, the luster of the tourbillon has been tarnished in the eyes of certain insiders. Tony Traina, an editor at watch publication Hodinkee, said that some serious watch collectors now espouse the view that “tourbillons are played out.”
Watches featuring tourbillons may also be considered ostentatious — look at all those whirring parts! — which is a turnoff for some, Traina said.
That, however, hasn’t been an issue for Trump. He said in the video promoting the tourbillon watch that it has “almost 200 grams of gold and more than 100 real diamonds. … I love gold. I love diamonds.”
How much is all that gold and all those diamonds worth?
Nouveau said on Instagram that the value of 200 grams of gold was less than $13,000. And Jeremy Auslander, partner at L.A.-based Roxbury Jewelry, who examined images of the timepiece at The Times’ request, estimated that it contained 1 to 1.25 carats of diamonds. He said the retail price for those diamonds at a VS1 grade — the clarity listed on the Trump Watches website — was about $2,500 to $3,500.
When factoring in the price of the watch’s movement — a term for its mechanical innards — as well as fabrication costs, experts told The Times that it probably cost between $20,000 and $30,000 to make each one.
O’Dell, the watch dealer, noted that plenty of mainstream watchmakers enjoy similarly fat margins: “Pricing in this industry often doesn’t square with reality.”
So, who makes it?
Even as observers savaged the watch, they wondered who was actually behind it.
The website for Trump Watches offered few clues.
But The Times tracked down the creator of the timepiece’s movement, Swiss watchmaker Olivier Mory of OM Mechanics. In an email interview, Mory said that he was brought into the fold by a “private label” company that is purchasing his movements and producing the watches, adding, “We only discovered the final customer after accepting the job.”
Mory, who makes several types of tourbillion movements, did not respond to a question about the price of the one in the Trump timepiece, but said that his cost anywhere from about $2,600 to $7,100, depending partly on which functions they include. He said he wasn’t concerned about his movements being used by a brand tied to Trump.
“I don’t have to be interested by a foreign politician…. I don’t see any reason to be ashamed as movement producer,” Mory said.
According to Trump Watches, its tourbillon timepiece will be made-to-order and ship as soon as this month. It’s not clear whether any working models have been produced. The brand’s website said “images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.”
That caught the eye of Mary Trump, a niece of the former president and one of his most emphatic critics. In a blog post, she said, “Leveraging the presidency in this way is truly grotesque.”
As for Mory, the Swiss watchmaker, he had his own take on American politics: “The U.S. political system is like coming from another planet.”
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