The Story Of Piaget’s Andy Warhol Watch

“Art is what you can get away with.”

This isn’t just something Andy Warhol said. It’s a crystallization of how he saw the world: a spar between illusion and intention, surface and substance, fame and emptiness. Warhol didn’t just paint what the world was, he painted how the world looked at itself.

In many ways, Andy Warhol was a mirror held up to America’s obsessions. His speciality: turning the ordinary into icons.

Andy Warhol's style of visual art was eccentric.

Behind his deadpan demeanor was a mind teeming with contradictions: a devout Catholic who worshipped celebrities, a shy introvert who craved attention, and a commercial illustrator who became the high priest of pop art. He didn’t just paint celebrities, he dissected the very idea of celebrity, turning it into something both sacred and disposable.

His fascinations, though, were as eclectic as they were obsessive. He collected cookie jars, taxidermied cats, and cheap trinkets with the same reverence others reserved for fine art. He sure had a fixation on time and that goes beyond the popular phrase, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Andy Warhol owned no less than 313 timepieces, most of which were a staunch reflection of his aesthetic obsession as well as sophisticated tastes. After his death in 1987, most were offloaded at a Sotheby’s auction and among the lots, six were Piaget timepieces. Four of those watches auctioned are today part of Piaget’s private collection.

More than the watches, Andy Warhol maintained a strong bond with chairman Yves Piaget himself. One Piaget watch that stood out is the artist’s 1973 acquisition, which not so long ago was relaunched and formally renamed as: the Andy Warhol watch.

An Eccentric Art Deco Inception

The 1970s was a pivotal decade for watchmaking among many things. It was the advent of quartz tech and the concept genesis of a luxury steel sports watch. For Piaget, a brand forging its legacy on true artistic sensibility, there has never been a compromise with what’s their chief objective most of the time: glamour.

The fashion-forward era surely invigorated an exploration into eccentric shapes, materials and colors, but none at the cost of the Maison’s sense of glamor. In each of these attainments, Piaget is credited as a pioneering expert, notably in the department of stone dials. Although the brand did participate in the unofficial contest of the luxury integrated bracelet sports watch category, it did so on its own distinct terms with the Beta 21 powered Polo in 1979.

Piaget largely centers around artistic crafts, precious materials, and an exclusive catering to luxury lifestyles. This fierce anchor towards glamor, iconicity and artistry is what attracted Andy Warhol to the brand. Oblivious to the fact that the later collection will be named after him, Andy Warhol acquired a watch known as the Ref. 15102 which debuted with the Beta 21 caliber in 1972. It had no name then.

This cushion case shaped Art Deco watch with a stepped bezel wore a prominent size of 45mm and a 38mm lug-to-lug. Despite being a wide watch, it wasn’t huge on the wrist. That’s a cushion case bliss. The original iteration was produced briefly from 1972 to 1977 in very limited numbers. Many reports suggest that only 26 were made then. Warhol’s timepiece featured a yellow gold case with a galvanised anthracite-coloured dial.

Chasing Iconicity With A Vintage Icon

By the year 2000, Piaget replaced Beta 21 calibers with an even slimmer quartz movement - the 7P. However, in the late 90s, there was a re-transition towards mechanical movements and Piaget created a whole new men’s collection catering to different complications. The watches with elegant precious metal cases and thin mechanical calibers were part of the “Black Tie” collection.

At Piaget’s 140th anniversary in 2014, the brand looked to revive a few pieces from its back catalog and the Ref. 15102 from 1972 was reborn as the Black Tie Vintage. Before it had no name. So nearly 37 years after it ceased production, the eccentric cushion shaped watch made a comeback.

Well, call it fate, coincidence or the absolute obvious, the Black Tie Vintage earned nickname and media attention as the Warhol, as a reference to its most popular wearer. The impetus was set for Piaget, in its 150th anniversary year, to formally reintroduce the watch in November 2024 as the “Andy Warhol watch.” Named after the artist who owned no less than seven Piaget timepieces, the latest renaming of his signature Piaget timepiece was synthesized owing to an official collaboration under license with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

That’s how the nickname became the name.

The new Andy Warhol watch born as a striking new design borrowing core aesthetics of the original from 1972. Introduced in 2024 as the Piaget Andy Warhol Clou de Paris, the new watches feature for the first time a guilloché pattern on the stepped bezel. This hobnail motif is engraved on the two stepped tiers of its bezel. The modern collection offers a choice of the Clou de Paris as well as the signature rounded or gadroon stepped bezel styles.

The current iterations retain the 45mm width but feature a more contemporary lug-to-lug of 43mm, giving the watch a much more pronounced presence while retaining original aesthetic integrity. Its 501P1 automatic movement, measuring just 3.63mm thick, makes the watch slim at 8mm.

The Andy Warhol watch offers a keen focus on personalization and is very much a made-to-order collection, with more than 200 different configurations to choose from. Collectors can choose from 10 different types of stone dials and also personalize the type of leather strap, hands, and case material for their orders.

At the Watches and Wonders 2025, Piaget further elevated its Andy Warhol watch with a selection of a new variant with a lustrous opal dial with its white gold bezel set with a triple-row of baguette-cut blue sapphires. A tiger’s eye dial variant along with two variants in green and white meteorite dials rounded up the new releases.

Ultimately, the Andy Warhol is the brand’s most distinctive dress watch. Its legacy appeal, the now bespoke nature and iconic design capture the eccentric obsessions of Andy Warhol and ours too, ever so perfectly.