I genuinely think Rolex may have achieved the impossible: becoming a luxury brand that makes everyone look worse, while getting them to pay thousands of dollars. Which sucks, because a lot of their watches are beautiful. The Submariner is basically a perfect design, iconic for a reason. But the second that crown logo enters the equation, your entire aura changes like you equipped a cursed item.
If you’re not rich, wearing a Rolex gives off “financed the look and got indebted" energy. It’s the horological equivalent of a guy leasing a base-model BMW and suddenly posting motivational sigma quotes. Nobody sees it and thinks “wow, successful.” They think “this dude definitely explains crypto at parties. Stay away.”
You could be dressed perfectly and the Rolex still injects a faint layer of “assistant regional sales director.” It’s spiritually identical to wearing Ferrari socks. Why?
But if you are rich, Rolex somehow loops around into being tacky in a completely different way. It’s luxury for people whose idea of sophistication is ordering bottle service with sparklers. It’s expensive, sure, but in the same way a gold-plated steak is expensive. There’s no mystique, it's just there in your face, no elegance or restraint. Just plate the steak in gold and that's luxury right? Just buy a Rolex! Every plumber, realtor, nightclub promoter, and divorced guy named Brent recognizes it instantly. "If you know you know" doesn't work if everyone knows, you know?
Real luxury has a little ambiguity to it. A Rolex is the luxury equivalent of a giant neon sign that says “PLEASE LOOK AT MY SUCCESS.”
The only people who can actually pull off a Rolex are the obscenely wealthy. Like old-money private-island wealthy. The kind of rich where the Rolex genuinely is the casual option because they bought it the same way normal people buy toothpaste. At that level it circles back around into understated because they simply do not care. But honestly, even then, it just looks like they don't know any better either.
A moment of respect to Rolex, the company
Honestly, it’s impressive. Rolex has legendary craftsmanship, iconic designs, absurd history... and yet somehow cultivated the exact same social aura as a bottle-service Instagram account. Anyway, it annoys me because the Submariner is one of my favorite watch designs ever made, but I know deep in my soul that if I put one on I’d instantly look like a guy who says “networking” unironically.
