The return of fit god and unassuming watch guy, Daniel Day-Lewis
The master of us all is back! And wearing a Rolex Explorer to the premiere of his new film, 'Anemone', which was directed by his son, Ronan
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THE MASTER OF US ALL, Daniel Day-Lewis, makes his return to the screen.
Like His Airness, retirement did not stick. The 68-year-old actor will star in his son Ronan Day-Lewis’ feature directorial debut, Anemone, a psychological thriller that follows two estranged brothers as they reunite in a remote Northern England cabin. (My question: in a role that he’s co-written with his son, how method did DDL go?)
The elder Day-Lewis’ last credit was as the tyrannical couturier Reynolds Woodcock in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 Phantom Thread.
Related: Every Paul Thomas Anderson film, ranked: from Phantom Thread to One Battle After Another
Stick around any menswear water-cooler chit chat and you’ll know that we’ve been hungry for Day-Lewis’ god-tier fits.
It’s well-documented that the three-time Oscar winner (all in the Best Actor category, mind you) is partial to a sturdy Carhartt jacket. The elusive actor has been spotted stomping through New York in Gore-Tex anoraks – long before gorp-core. And since he’s been based in the US for quite some time now, he’s developed a taste for Americana. (Not the overtly yee-haw kind, but the quotidian flyover state kind – elite!)
Well, you can thank nepotism (the good kind) for bringing him out of retirement, which means more fits as he sets off on his Anemone promo tour. At the New York Film Festival this week, you can sum up what Day-Lewis wore as menswear catnip: a dark workwear jacket, a pop-button shirt, cardboard-hard selvedge denim, and signature hiking boots and neckerchief.
He even offered something for the watch guys in the crowd: a Rolex Explorer 1. Eagle-eyed Reddit dwellers ID’d it as the 36 mm case from a recent photoshoot with Rolling Stone.
It’s an unassuming timepiece that traces its history to the ’50s, when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first people to set foot on the summit of Mount Everest. Sturdy, no-nonsense, and made to the toughest conditions on earth, that kind of narrative would appeal to the There Will Be Blood actor’s penchant for gorp-core.
The watch’s signature feature is the 3-6-9 dial, an unusual move for the Swiss house, who normally stick to Roman numerals or minimalist dots.
Considering Day-Lewis doesn’t participate in the celebrity economy of brand endorsements, the watch is entirely his own. With his keen taste and character work, he might give Hollywood’s watch guys a run for their money. In Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis wore a circular J.W. Benson from his own collection. (The same one he wore to accept his first Academy Award in 1990 for My Left Foot.)
To the watch guys in the industry, watch out: the king has returned.
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