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The Oscars red carpet has quietly become one of the best watch shows of the year.
What used to be celebrities simply dressing for Hollywood’s biggest night has evolved into something far more deliberate: a global stage where brands place their most interesting pieces on the wrists of the people everyone is already watching.
The spontaneous wrist-check has mostly disappeared, replaced by full-blown — and only slightly disguised — horological marketing. The upside is that the carpet has also become one of the easiest places to spot some of the rarest and most intriguing watches in circulation.
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This year, plenty of noteworthy pieces made the rounds. But the most influential wrist of the night may have belonged to Ryan Coogler, the Oakland-born director who took home both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for his critically acclaimed and commercially successful vampire allegory, Sinners.
And that wasn’t just because of Coogler’s star power alone.
What’s old is new again
Coogler was first seen wearing theCartier Tank à Guichets — specifically, the platinum edition from Cartier’s Prive collection, reissued for the first time in nearly two decades just last year on the red carpet ahead of what would ultimately be a history-making night for him. Getty Images: Julian Hamilton / Staff
The watch he wore was the Cartier Tank à Guichets — specifically, the platinum edition from Cartier’s Prive collection, reissued in 2025 for the first time in nearly two decades.
It’s a piece so architecturally singular and deliberately scarce that it used to barely register outside serious collector circles until last year.
Credit for the jumping hour complication and the guichet dial — from the French, which can vary in meaning from “ticket” and “small window” to “counters” — of course, doesn’t belong exclusively to Cartier.
As Robb Report notes, Austrian watchmaker Josef Pallweber was licensing jump-hour display mechanisms to IWC as far back as 1883.
Still, when it comes to the sudden renewed interest in this unmistakable watch style, Cartier’s influence is hard to ignore.
Still, when it comes to the sudden renewed interest in this unmistakable watch style, Cartier’s influence is hard to ignore.
At Watches and Wonders last spring — the industry’s most anticipated annual tradeshow previewing the year’s new releases — Cartier’s reissue of the Tank à Guichets was arguably the most buzzed-about drop in the room, and not just among collectors.
Cartier’s reissue of the Tank à Guichets, which originally debuted in 1928, was one of the most talked-about watch releases at Watches and Wonders 2025, the industry’s largest and most influential watch tradeshow. Cartier
The original Tank a Guichets debuted in 1928, worn by luminaries including Duke Ellington, and featured a stark, architecturally spare dial with small apertures — one for jumping hours at 12 o’clock, one for sweeping minutes below it.
As Hodinkee detailed in its hands-on review, the watch was subsequently reissued in extremely limited numbers in 1996, 1997, and 2005 under the brand’s Collection Privee Cartier Paris line. Across all runs, fewer than 400 examples have ever existed.
By the time Cartier brought it back for Watches and Wonders 2025 as part of the Cartier Prive collection, pre-announcement secondary market prices had already cleared $100,000.
The 2025 lineup introduced three regular-production references — in yellow gold, rose gold, and platinum — plus a limited “Oblique” edition in platinum with its apertures diagonally offset, capped at just 200 pieces.
Breaking barriers and making history: Ryan Coogler won Best Original Screenplay for Sinners, becoming only the second Black writer to ever take home the Oscar in this category. He also won the Best Director award. Getty Images: Credit: Kevin Winter / Staff
With Guichet dials and jumping-hour complications suddenly back in the conversation, other watchmakers didn’t take long to explore the format themselves.
Audemars Piguet entered with the Neo Frame Jumping Hour, a striking and distinctly modern spin on the format.
Coogler’s specific piece is the platinum version of the Cartier Privé Tank à Guichets, and if you’re thinking you can simply pull it up on Cartier’s website next to the Santos and Tank Normale, think again.
The Cartier Privé line operates outside the brand’s standard commercial ecosystem — these are special, collector-tier releases that don’t live in showcases at the local boutique.
According to Hodinkee, retail pricing for the 2025 platinum Cartier Privé Tank à Guichets Coogler wore starts at $55,500, though the few versions that have appeared on the grey secondary market are demanding nearly triple that price.
In other words, Coogler arrived with a platinum trophy on his wrist — and left with two of the world’s most coveted in gold.
About the Author: Ben Bowers is the Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Gear Patrol. Throughout his tenure in media, Ben has written and reported on everything from consumer tech to whiskey, watches, cars, camping, and personal style. These days, he gets to write less than he’d like to.
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