Mark Zuckerberg Picked the Wrong Watch to Announce Meta’s New Oakley Sunglasses

Editors at nearly every media outlet on the planet would rightfully accuse me of burying the lede here. Still, anyone familiar with our work at GP knows we’re wired – for better or worse – to focus on a level of product culture most people aren’t even aware of.

I should be talking about Meta’s new product announcement: a substantive addition to its line of sneakily successful smart glasses, which we even named one of the most important gadgets of 2024. The new iterations are heralded as creating “a new category of Performance AI glasses” and made in partnership with Oakley.

Even from the distance of a press release, the new shades sound like a notable improvement over earlier versions made by Ray-Ban. But what caught my eye in Zuckerberg’s personal reveal of the glasses on Threads wasn’t what was sitting on his face. It was what was perched on his wrist.

As he’s been known to do lately, Zuckerberg shared a picture of himself wearing an impressive and exclusive watch that many horological sleuths can easily identify.

But in my humble opinion, he could’ve chosen a far better watch for the occasion that would’ve showcased his relatively newfound watch knowledge chops in an entirely different way.

Quite the Collection

Threads @Zuck

As my former colleague Oren Hartov has documented extensively at GQ over the last year or so, Zuckerberg has quickly evolved into a serious watch collector in a relatively short period.

Thanks to selfies posted on the social media platforms he owns and a devoted plague of paparazzi, eagle-eyed watch nerds have now spotted him wearing all manner of coveted and/or interesting timepieces, ranging from several awe-inspiring pieces from F.P. Journe, to more mainstream but classic Patek’s or an iced-out vintage Rolex Daytona and even a hand-made Greubel Forsey that costs $900,000.

Purple Reign

De Bethune

Based on even this small sample of watch sightings, it’s clear that no watch on earth feels out of reach for the man that Bloomberg states has a net worth of merely $245 billion as of publication.

In this context, it’s not a shock to learn he also owns the De Bethune DB28xs Purple Rain, which he picked to wear while announcing Meta’s new line of smart glasses with Oakley.

Thanks to its iridescent purple hue and unmistakable floating lug design, it’s a watch everyone will notice. Still, only horological enthusiasts would fully appreciate precisely how special it is.

In case you’re like most and not familiar with De Bethune as a brand, it’s a high-end independent watch brand co-founded by master watchmaker Denis Flageollet, who at least one watch publication has loftily compared to Leonardo da Vinci as an inventor and horological genius.

De Bethune

When Flageollet started the brand in 2002, his aspirations were as grand as they come in watchmaking. Rather than creating watches that relied on parts and components sourced elsewhere, he aspired to build a proper “Manufacture,” which in French watch speak, refers to a tier of watch brands capable of making most, if not all, of a watch’s key parts entirely in-house.

Today, De Bethune’s watches are hard to miss and easy to recognize once you’ve seen one or two. Many of their most famous examples are boldly shaped and strikingly colorful.

They’re timepieces meant to attract elite collectors who’ve already owned all of the usual luxury watch suspects and have subsequently evolved their tastes to prioritize innovation, novelty, creativity, and exclusivity above all else.

De Bethune

In the company’s self-assured own words, “De Bethune does not simply create watches, but timeless works of art.”

The Purple Rain, launched in early 2024, mostly epitomizes the brand’s trademark elements, with a few key differences.

The Prince-approved shade is a notable, royalty-approved departure from De Bethune’s signature blues. As a DB28xs model, the 38.7mm watch also qualifies as the smallest in De Bethune’s lineup (hence the “xs” in the name).

Its bold looks are paired with premium technical materials and innovative timekeeping mechanics, though I’ll spare you most of the tedium of those latter details.

The key facts to know are that The Purple Rain is made almost entirely from grade 5 titanium, which makes it exceptionally light. Its rich purple hue comes from anodizing the metal at ultrahigh temperatures and polishing it to a mirror finish.

De Bethune

The intricately wavy dial, littered with tiny silver specs, is also an exclusive design De Bethune calls a ‘random guilloché pattern’ that evokes the stars’ reflection in the sky.

Positioning the crown at twelve o’clock instead of three o’clock, as is typical with most watches, is another signature design element of the DB28xs family that prioritizes symmetry over convenience.

Spotting one of these watches in the wild is a minor miracle, because only 25 examples of the Purple Rain were produced, each costing roughly $100,000.

In short, if your tastes gravitate toward modern watch designs and elite craftsmanship, and you have the personal style that fits with wearing a bright purple watch, this is as badass of a timepiece as you’ll find in the watchmaking world.

A Missed Opportunity

Oakley

Credit to Zuck. The De Bethune DB28xs Purple Rain is a watch-collecting flex that does vibe naturally with the bolder, retro-future aesthetics Oakley is known for.

But he also blew a golden opportunity to showcase his horological knowledge in a humbler and funnier way.

After all, in the photo, Zuckerberg is seen wearing an Oakley Shirt to match his Oakley shades. And could’ve opted for an Oakley watch to complete the trifecta.

Yes, Oakley once had a watch business. And it wasn’t just a brief product experiment.

As Alex Rakestraw outlined in depth at High Snobiety almost four years ago, the sunglasses brand actually had quite a run producing wild-looking timepieces with aggressive names like Time Bomb, Torpedo, and Bullet, from 1998 through 2015. And even as recently as 2020, there were rumors that a portion of the product line might come back.

Ebay user California Direct

These now “vintage” Oakley watch designs never matched my tastes back in the day, though there’s no way my parents were buying me a $1,000 watch as a kid anyway. They also don’t stir any nostalgic itch for early 2000s styles in me now.

But their bold and surreal silhouettes do align surprisingly well now with the more avant-garde aesthetics of many modern haute horology brands.

Zuckerberg could’ve certainly had his pick of collection-worthy examples of Oakley watches: think something like the limited edition Oakley Timebomb in 18k yellow gold, or even the version Michael Jordan once owned, without breaking a financial sweat.

Or he could’ve just quickly snagged a more generic one on eBay for less than $399, which is what the Oakley Meta HSTN (pronounced how-stun) smart glasses will cost when they launch later this summer.

The silver lining here is that since Meta and Oakley’s parent company, EssilorLuxottica, announced a new long-term agreement to work together over a decade just last year, chances are Zuckerberg will have another shot to remedy his watch choice sometime in the future and show some love to one of the most distinctive and fascinating watch lines of the late 90s and early 2000s.

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