Timothée Chalamet is officially in a relationship with this indie watchmaker

Last fall, Timothée Chalamet’s watch game took a sharp detour. After several years of serving as a Cartier ambassador, sporting teensy Panthères on the red carpet and Tank à Guichets at Knicks games, the Oscar nominee became one of the most visible proponents of independent watchmaking. Suddenly, he was turning up on the Marty Supreme press tour wearing the types of timepieces typically reserved for folks who learn French strictly so they can ask: Une allocation, s'il vous plaît, monsieur. The shockers came one after another – a Simon Brette here; a Petermann Bédat there; Rexhep Rexhepi’s Akrivia in the mix for good measure. But the watch brand Chalamet kept returning to the most—in both its vintage and modern forms – was the recently revived Swiss-Danish outfit Urban Jürgensen.

Today, UJ and Chalamet are making their relationship official. But the pair are going far beyond your typical brand ambassadorship: Chalamet is taking a minority stake in the family-owned business and will also serve as a creative advisor to the house on a variety of projects. The deal marks the first time the actor has held a stake in any company. “When [owners] Andy and Alex Rosenfield introduced me to Urban Jürgensen, what drew me in was how clearly the focus was on the watches themselves – on craft, on process, on getting it right,” Chalamet said in a statement. “It also felt like something different than the typical arrangement – more of a creative collaboration than a traditional endorsement. I’m excited to be involved and to continue exploring this world alongside them.”

This is a massive shot in the arm for a brand like UJ, which only relaunched last summer, and has already benefited from its association with the Dune star. Originally founded in 1773, the brand has gone through many eras. This latest iteration of the brand, led by master watchmaker Kari Voutilainen, debuted with three new watches that take inspiration from a historic pocket watch and focus on high-end complications like the perpetual calendar. The new UJ’s kick-off was successful, but Chalamet’s seal of approval gave the upstart company some much-needed exposure among non-watch geeks.

Chalamet wearing the UJ-2 at the Oscars Nominees Luncheon in February

The most intriguing aspect of this new union will be Chalamet’s contributions to the brand – the early fruits of which we’ve apparently already seen, in the form of the custom coloured straps the actor has worn on the red carpet. “When we first met, we were struck by Timothée’s curiosity and interest in independent watchmaking,” said Alex Rosenfield, UJ’s CEO.

According to Chalamet, he’s been looking to contribute creatively to a watch brand for quite some time. “A couple of years ago,” he said, “a film director I admire deeply piqued my interest in artisanal watchmaking – not the flashy kind, but the kind that demands years of discipline, patience, and ultimately, mastery. I started to see it as a sibling to filmmaking – a precise expression, just on a different scale. One lives on an IMAX screen, the other within 48 by 40 by 10 millimetres, but both have the ability to hold entire worlds within them.”