It may seem strange at first glance to connect Andy Warhol - the king of Pop Art, the image that turned commodity into icon - with the refined world of haute horlogerie. And yet the story of Warhol’s affinity for watches - and the newly revealed official partnership between his foundation and Piaget - offers a compelling chapter in the narrative of how art, lifestyle and collecting intertwine. A recent feature in T Magazine pulls back the curtain on this lesser-known facet of Warhol’s collecting, reminding us that Warhol’s life was not simply about slick screen-prints and celebrity countenance, but also about accumulation, display and the fetishistic allure of objects. Collectors will recognise the significance of that impulse. The work of acquiring is rarely neutral: it is about identity, about narrative, about the signalling of taste. Warhol understood this better than most. His watches did not simply tell time: they told a story about who he was, what milieu he inhabited, and how he placed himself within the culture of visibility. According to the article, Warhol owned at least seven Piaget watches, four of which now reside in the maison’s private collection. The landmark watch he acquired in 1973, the cushion-shaped Piaget Ref. 15102, was less a timepiece than an objet d’art - bold in its design and emblematic of an era.
What changes with the newly publicised collaboration between the Piaget brand and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is the official recognition of that connection. The watch once worn by Warhol has been renamed, the model now formally called the “Andy Warhol Watch.” More significantly, the first‐edition timepiece released under this license - the “Collage” edition - translates Warhol’s aesthetic into horological form: rare materials, semi-abstract dial marquetry, limited edition of 50 pieces worldwide. This is not just a celebrity tie-in; it is a collector piece that speaks to the same language as Warhol’s art: repetition, color, transformation of the mundane into the coveted.
For Andipa’s audience, this matters on several levels. First, this story underscores how artist-collectors engage with objects beyond their own medium. Warhol’s accumulation of watches, jewellery, art, ephemera and “Time Capsules” was an extension of his practice. He treated everything - ads, soup cans, signed Polaroids, wristwatches - as part of an expanded field of art and identity. Being able to trace that collecting logic gives a deeper dimension to his work and to the market around it. Second, it highlights provenance, authenticity and narrative as value drivers. A Piaget watch formerly owned by Warhol, or a Warhol print gifted alongside one of his iconic watches, becomes not merely a purchase but a cultural statement. The new “Andy Warhol Watch” is already a testament to how the estate, the brand and the market recognise the story behind the object. Third, it reminds us that art-market objects are not by definition static. The collaboration elevates the watch into both a horological collectible and a piece of Warhol lore - thickening the material and symbolic layers of what might otherwise be dismissed as luxury accessory.
One can read this narrative as a microcosm of how taste evolves in the collector’s world. Warhol himself once said “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself,” and the transformation here is literal as well as metaphorical. The transition from Piaget’s “Black Tie” model to the “Andy Warhol Watch” signals how an object can shift from private possession to institutional-endorsed collectible. The limited edition brings new attention, new scarcity, new story. Of course, this is not simply a story about a luxury watch. It is an insight into Warhol’s modus operandi. The watches were part of his visual vocabulary: a wristwatch wasn’t just a timekeeper but a sign of context, of glamour, of being in the inner circle. They were props in the theatre of his life, much as his Factory, his celebrity portraits, and his films were. When the watch resurfaces now in 2025 as a watch conceived in dialogue with the Warhol archive, it invites collectors to engage with that narrative. What does it mean to own a piece of Pop Art history that wore time on its face? What does it mean when the estate, the brand and the cultural apparatus converge around an object to authenticate it as “Warhol‐adjacent”?
The convergence of artist legacy, luxury branding, limited edition and story creates a compelling axis of desirability. Even if one does not acquire the timepiece itself, understanding how the narrative is structured can inform how one approaches other Warhol works: editions, collages, multiples, ephemera. Because the provenance, the story, the relational web matter more than ever in a market where surface alone is insufficient. The Piaget-Warhol story reminds us that collecting is never purely about image. It is about image in motion, about context, about relationship, about the object charged by story. For collectors who respect the confluence of art, culture and commerce, this is a case study in how a wristwatch becomes legacy, how an artist’s personal taste becomes public symbolism, how the material fragments of an icon’s life acquire value beyond the aesthetic. Warhol may have made the everyday into the iconic, but now the everyday - a watch - has been elevated once again into an icon of his world and ours.
