Every week for the past seven months, I’ve gathered the best watches the world of celebrity and Hollywood have to offer. You can guess the results: Rolex, Patek Philippe, Omega, and Richard Mille watches, pieces made out of gold or covered in diamonds, watches whose aggregated value would infuriate Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But over the past month, I’ve noticed something peculiar: the coolest people aren’t wearing those types of timepieces. Instead, I see rubber straps, plastic cases, and price tags that barely break the $20 barrier: I see, unmistakably, Casios.
The brand's watches really lounge in the spotlight on the wrists of two celebrities in particular, Tyler, the Creator and Kristen Stewart. And these aren’t just your normal A-list celebs, but folks with a long track record of dressing in ways we dream, in our wildest dreams, of dressing.
Tyler and Stewart have gone in opposite directions with their Casios. Tyler wears the MQ24-9B, a classic-looking watch with hands and Arabic numerals. The dial comes in the shade of yellow that other, more expensive watches bloom into after decades of wear. From a distance, the watch might be confused with your garden-variety vintage watch.
Stewart’s watch is much less bashful about its digital status. The LA11WB-1 comes in Casio’s recognizable round-edge shape with a digital display, and an innertube of electric-blue plastic running around the face of the watch. While Tyler’s watch does the song and dance of a more complicated and expensive piece, Stewart leans fully into the fact she is pairing her expensive wardrobe with a watch that costs less than a Cameo from Washington Wizards player (and veritable Who?) Admiral Schofield. (Tara Swennen, Stewart’s stylist, declined to comment for this article for a very cool reason: the actress bought the watch herself.)
There’s something interesting about the way folks like Tyler, Stewart and other famous fans of the brand like John Mayer and Ryan Gosling wear their Casio watches, though. They mix their two-digit price tag watches with expensive designer pieces. In the above photo, Stewart is clearly not above spending money on what she wears, but the Casio is of a piece with her slouchy Rich-Casual look: Thom Browne jackets, faded jeans, Nike Cortez sneakers, and a watch that says, I can make anything cool. And she’s right! And in the context of Hollywood and celebrity, among a sea of Patek and Rolex pieces, the most unexpected watch a person can wear is a $20 one from Casio.
Tyler, meanwhile, who helped put Supreme onto a more mainstream audience in the early part of this decade, understands the allure of mixing and matching. He knows how to pair T-shirts so incredibly exclusive they sell out in seconds with a watch Amazon is so eager to send out the company is practically firing up a delivery drone at this very moment. Unlike a lot of celebrities who will dress head-to-toe in a single brand, Tyler screws with the knobs of an outfit until he has something that maintains some modicum of inscrutability. And best of it all: he does it in a watch we can all afford.
Stewart and Tyler aren’t the only celebrities who have gravitated towards Casio over the years, either. Earlier in his career, Ryan Gosling often wore a $25 Casio A168W-1. “With its daily alarm, hourly time signal and auto calendar, you’ll never need to worry about missing an appointment again,” the product description reads. It’s a funny watch to wear when the appointments you’re never again worried about missing are things like, “Film Drive,” “Date Night With Eva Mendes,” and, according to Gosling’s Wikipedia, “Gain Widespread Recognition.”
John Mayer, too, has long been a fan of Casio’s sub-brand G-Shock. “I love Patek Philippe perpetual calendars only marginally more than I dig the Casio Frogman G-Shock—but for different reasons—and if you’re wearing either, chances are I’ll sidle over to you and start a conversation about it,” Mayer wrote in Hodinkee back in 2012. Having an appreciation for both, Mayer argues, is what being a watch enthusiast is all about.
Figures like Bill Gates and Robert Mueller also famously wear Casio watches. These two make a bit more sense: the super-affordable and practical timepieces make a statement about how pragmatic these men are. Sure, Bill Gates could wear any watch in the world—he has enough money to buy the world’s most expensive $31 million timepiece 3,441 times over—but wearing a Casio signals something much more strongly about what he values. (An opposition to the wealth tax, maybe!)
What all Casio wearers have in common is the knowledge they don’t need a splashy watch as proof of their wealth, celebrity, and style chops. Cherish this fact, friends, because it means you don’t either.