Stella for the People: The 2020 Rolex Oyster Perpetual

Nine months in 2020. Seven months since the world has been forever changed by our collective experience with the global Covid-19 pandemic, and Rolex may have just launched the exact watches we needed, now more than ever.

No, I’m not talking about the impressive new Submariner family with its slimmed down, recontoured more elegant case, with a more open and visible dial and hands, and for the first time in 67 years, a 21mm in width bracelet. No. I’m taking about the other watch that was launched. A watch that I’m calling the Stella for the People. But unlike the 1970’s when the Stella was created as an exuberantly extroverted timepiece, targeted at an elite demographic, Rolex has taken the chromatic vibrancy and cult collectability behind the Stellas, created a range of dials that are both uplifting amid what has been a year of unremitting gloom, and placed them inside of what is one of their most accessibly priced timepieces. The watch in question is made in five sizes, 28mm, 31mm, 34mm, 36mm and, lastly, 41mm (replacing the 39mm model) and is known to collectors by the minimalistic acronym “OP.”

Yes, that’s right I speak of the Oyster Perpetual, the most paired backed, simplistic, pure, reductionist Rolex around. Rolex themselves, have described this watch as, the Quintessential Oyster. It is devoid of date. But does all a Rolex should do, which is to work with charming perfection. And at a hair over four thousand Sterling, five thousand US dollars and seven thousand Singapore dollars, they are amongst the best horological values around. Don’t get me wrong I know in the context of reality and, in particular 2020, that’s a hell of a lot of money. But my point is that at this price range the OP pretty much beats out all of its competition.

No Corners Cut