House IWC has staked a claim for the crown

For the Emmys, the Game Of Thrones cast reunited for what may well be their final fling.

Winter is over. Sansa smashed the glass ceiling up North. Jon Snow retreated into the woods forever more. But, before Kit Harington bid farewell entirely to the Frown Prince of Winterfell, the 32-year-old outfitted a Lead Actor nomination in Givenchy.

Oh, and one standout piece of haute horlogerie.

IWC, a Swiss marque long favoured by the likes of John Mayer and Joel Edgerton, was the brand of choice, with Harington settling for the storied Da Vinci model. The clean and classic piece can trace its roots back to 1969, when IWC peddled the first ever Swiss-made quartz movement – a key powerbroker jointly developed in tandem by several manufactures.

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Fast forward to 2019, and the Da Vinci looks a whole lot different. It’s not gold, for a start. Nor is the sole detail a date aperture to 3 o’clock. Instead, Harington’s model (a Da Vinci Automatic Moon Phase 36, if you were wondering) boasts an automatic movement comprised of 171 components and 25 jewels with a 42-hour power reserve. It’s all very precise stuff. And, if that wasn’t enough, the movement comes with a Côtes de Genève finish: a painstaking process that creates Guilloché-like engravings by way of very fine, artful scratches.

A noble entry into Harington’s already respectable collection. The strength of IWC, however, is its reputation for being a watch fan’s watch brand: the sort of label that comes with a bit of experience after a few years on the Swiss trail. What’s more, the Schaffhausen-based outfit has been known to enlist a legion of other Hollywood bannerman to back its cause: Christoph Waltz and Ewan McGregor in the 2014 Portofino campaign, for example, or Bradley Cooper’s Fondation Antoine de Saint Exupéry piece for the Oscars.

Harington (and his own IWC) stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and, perhaps, a cut above the competition. Big kingly power players live outside Westeros, too.

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