NFL Legend Aaron Rodgers Is Now Officially a Watch Designer
Aaron Rodgers understandably has a thing for the color green. That or he’s just so used to it by now. The four-time MVP and future NFL Hall of Famer has spent his career quarterbacking for the Green Bay Packers until his recent trade to the New York Jets, so between the two teams, he’s been living in some dramatic shade of the blue-yellow hue for the past 18 years. So when word quietly spread in late summer that Rodgers proposed a watch design project to Zenith, the Swiss horology brand, the obvious first question was: Is it going to be green?
In a word: Duh. “It has always been a color associated with me.” Rodgers tells ELLE DECOR. “My history as an NFL player has been playing green, so it was natural.” He didn’t think they’d go for it, however, because it’s not a color the brand had a lot of experience working with—at all. “Zenith had never done a green watch before,” he says. But being that Rodgers is an ambassador for the LVMH-owned brand—and has a winning smile—he had enough pull to make it happen. “I said let’s go further, let’s do it for the first time,” says Julien Tornare, CEO of Zenith.
Rodgers also hinted at a few “easter eggs” in the watch’s design, but wouldn’t specify as if to say, à la Stanley Kubrick, let the audience interpret it how they will. But when pushed to comment on the yellow-tipped second hand—a horological Room 237-esque detail easily missed upon cursory inspection of the dial and hands—being a nod to his Packers days, he demurred. “Listen, there were a few options: black, white, yellow,” he says. He wondered if choosing yellow would be too on the nose. “I thought it just looked the best.”
The stainless-steel Chronomaster Sport automatic chronograph is a limited edition of 250 pieces and features elegant longitudinal beveling from lug to lug, tritone registers, as well as a ceramic 1/10-second scale bezel and lacquered dial. Beyond the eye-popping verdant palette, Rodgers nixed the the standard stick indices in favor of luminous Arabic numerals—a first for the model. The 3600 El Primero movement allows timing at 1/10 second, with the second-hand completing full rotations faster than you can say “I don’t even know who you are, bro.”
As for any future plans for Rodgers to design another timepiece, it seems too early to make the call. “Let’s see how this one goes,” he says. “It could be time to reach my star in watchmaking.” No doubt, there will be demand for this first piece. Not just from the general public or the serious collectors, but also from his teammates, who are aware of his connection to Zenith and have, shall we say, certain expectations. For example, his teammate, the star wide receiver Garrett Wilson, has commented on various pieces Rodgers has worn to Jets games. “He’s always giving me props on them. I told him he should get one,” Rodgers says. “He said, ‘Oh yeah? Get me one.’”
You Might Also Like
