Is there a more delightful watch collector than Will Ferrell? We doubt it.
He buys his own pieces locally at Feldmar Jewelers. He wears whatever he wants, regardless of price or provenance. He embraces crazy colors. He dresses up as a referee to cheer on the L.A. Kings. We should all be having this much fun with our watches (and perhaps spending a bit less time debating the definition of “in-house.”)
Well, for those looking to cop a bit of the Ferrell magic, his latest Oris is a decent place to start. Established in Hölstein in 1904, this independent Swiss watchmaker sells handsome divers, chronographs, and — to the best of our knowledge — the world’s only Kermit the Frog-themed pilot’s watch, most of which can be had for less than $5,000. Ferrell’s a longtime fan, having previously appeared in a pink-dialed Acquis and a green-dialed Divers Sixty-Five, the brand’s imminently funky 1960s-inspired dive watch, during interviews.
At a Los Angeles Kings game on New Year’s Day, Ferrell — whose taste in watches is matched only by his skill at showing them off to the paparazzi — strapped on the Divers Sixty-Five 12H over his ref’s uniform. One of the most versatile references in the brand’s dive watch catalog, it’s housed in a brushed 40mm skin diver-type case with a double-domed sapphire crystal and no crown guards. Seen from a few feet away, it appears very much like the type of affordable timekeeper that one might’ve encountered in a local dive shop in the 1960s, but in typical fashion, Oris has added its own special sauce to the recipe.
A closer look at the bezel reveals a black aluminum 12-hour insert rather than the more typical 60-minute count-up scale. While you can still use this bezel type for tracking elapsed minutes at depth or during decompression stops underwater, the 12-hour bezel is actually designed to easily track a second time zone. Simply rotate it to calculate the offset, in hours, between one locality and another — three hours counter-clockwise for the difference between L.A. and New York, for example — and voila! (They don’t call the 12-hour bezel the “poor man’s GMT” for nothing!)
Powered by Oris’s in-house Calibre 400 movement with a whopping 5-day power reserve and water-resistant to a respectable 100m, the $4,100 Divers Sixty-Five 12H is the platonic ideal of an everyday watch. It’s good for the office, great for travel, and — should the opportunity present itself — it pairs surprisingly well with a hockey ref’s stripes.
