John Mayer is one of the most influential best fake watch collectors in the world today. The singer-songwriter and eight-times Grammy award-winner has more than any other celebrity and made it cool to not only collect watches, but also be super nerdy about them too. When Drake needs a bit of advice on whatever preposterous new bling-fest of a watch he’s going to buy or have customised, he calls Mayer up for advice. Indeed, Mayer showed lots of men that you didn’t need to dress like an Italian plutocrat to look good with a Swiss automatic fake Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. The genius of the Gérald Genta-designed watch icon is that it looks just as cool with jeans and T-shirt, sat next to a bunch of wrist tattoos, which is how Mayer wears his.
More than a hobby, Mayer considers haute horology and kind of “syndrome” and has established a reputation within the highly obsessive and cultish watch community as one of its most-revered tastemakers. When he’s not writing songs or touring, he moonlights as a writer for the influential watch magazine Hodinkee and has even sat on the jury for the prestigious Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. This, combined with his immense fame as a pop star, means that he has helped to make haute horology – once a rather tweedy and recherché hobby for older men – relevant to a new generation.
One indication of the kind of clout he wields is that after ten years of serious collecting he was able to order a Patek Philippe ref 5400G with custom luminous hands, so that he could see it when playing live on stage. The ref 5400G, or Calatrava, is a dress aaa quality replica watch and so would not have sporty details like luminous hands, which are reserved for sports watches. To put it lightly, as a company, Patek doesn’t really do requests, but somehow made an exception for Mayer.
Mayer was so enamoured of his IWC Big Pilot replica watch with black dial, which he bought after spending hours poring through collectors guides, that his codename on tour became “Big Pilot”. He would later get into a spat with the company after he implored them in an open letter to cut back on celebrity endorsements and unnecessarily trendy design flourishes. IWC responded with a letter of its own, which referenced his song “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)”, telling him that he was wrong. Mayer also champions inexpensive watches too and proudly has Casio G-Shocks in his collection. The man just loves watches, full stop.
