This ultra rare Cartier might Paul Mescal's favourite watch

WHO KNEW THAT A LAD FROM MAYNOOTH would become one of the best-dressed men in the world – but here we are. Paul Mescal’s wardrobe might swing from boxy tailoring and unassuming textures to the tiny football shorts mullets of a Melbourne lad, but the details, particularly those on his wrist, prove that the man has taste, not just a good stylist.

While attending the premiere for his new film Hamnet at the London Film Festival, eagle eyes would have spotted on Mescal’s wrist a vintage Cartier Condole timepiece. It marks the second time that Mescal has chosen this as his watch-of-choice. He was first spotted wearing it at Wimbledon, where Mescal was kicking back to watch a match with fellow Irishman Andrew Scott.

That Mescal might potentially own one outright is a flex. Archive models like the Gondole are rarely released from Cartier’s private collection; when they do appear, it’s typically on loan for exhibitions or ambassador moments. To see one worn in the wild suggests more than access but a genuine passion. The man has done his homework and landed on something that makes other collectors salivate.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’ve never heard of a Condole. The curved edges of its silhouette aren’t quite the household Cartier name like a Tank or Santos.

Cartier Gondole watch

Yellow gold, black leather, mechanical movement.

CRWVVI0120

First released in the early 1970s, it emerged from the Maison’s Louis Cartier Collection, an era when Cartier reunited its Paris, London and New York ateliers under a single vision and began producing watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The design was daring for its time: an elongated oval of 18-carat yellow gold with a smooth stepped bezel, white dial and blued-steel hands. The original reference 97050 was hand-wound, small by today’s standards, and defined by Cartier’s singular elegance, curves with intent, geometry softened into grace.

Like Elordi at his Frankenstein premiere, Mescal dipped his toe into some additional Cartier pieces to finish his red carpet look. He paired the watch with Cartier’s new C de Cartier pin in yellow gold and onyx, plus a single Juste un Clou earring, refined gestures that threaded modernity through a classic silhouette. The look was pure Mescal: vintage but unsentimental, quietly confident, and meticulously composed.

But Mescal’s Gondole also places him squarely within a new era of watch masculinity where proportion is celebrated over presence. He’s part of a cabal of modern men rejecting the era of dinner-plate chronographs in favour of smaller, more personal pieces.

Fellow Cartier loyalist, Jacob Elordi, has been spotted wearing the Tank Louis and Baignoire Allongée with the same casual ease that once defined a leather jacket. Justin Bieber, whose watch box once screamed status, now leans into understatement with an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in soft gold, worn loose like jewellery. Timothée Chalamet has made the Cartier Panthère, a design once coded as feminine, a mainstay on red carpets. Even Bad Bunny, never one for subtlety, has gravitated towards the delicate curves of a vintage Patek Philippe.

In The Summer I Turned Pretty, a vintage Omega Constellation (or “Connie”) has become the trademark of on-screen heartthrob Conrad Fisher, a signifier for the era of the “pretty boy accessory”.

Viva la itty bitty watch comittee.

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