Page Dimensions

Approx. 8 1/8" x 11 1/2" (20cm x 29cm)

Story and Details

Why wouldn’t you wear a Rolex if you were flying the Concorde? Not just as a passenger, but at the helm as the captain.? The first and only largely successful supersonic commercial airliner, the Concorde, represented the pinnacle of aviation, flying from London to New York in a mere 3 hours. And when flying across 1.3 timezones per hour, pilots need a tool that can keep up. That’s where the Rolex GMT Master reference 1675 comes into play. First designed around 1954 purportedly in collaboration with pilots and executives at Pan American Airways, the GMT Master allowed for pilots to track 2 time zones at once - using the famous "Pepsi" colored 24-hour insert in the rotating bezel. Of course, the GMT Master was not built over the course of a year solely to be a tool... Like the Concorde, the Ref. 1675 performs its function with elegance and class, transforming its functional design into a timeless image that spans across generations.

And it’s not just the Concorde, nor the Ref. 1675 which persists as timeless icons to this day... The “If you were...'' print advertising campaign is easily part of that list. Created by the admen at J. Walter Thompson agency in the late 1960’s, the distinctive layout of this marketing material always pair a situation with a Rolex model. And not just any Rolex model, but one which has been carefully selected as the best tool to wear for that given situation. In the case of this ad, Concorde test pilots needed a tool which they could not only rely upon to track the time, but one that does so with effortless elegance, just like the Concorde itself.

So, if you were flying the Concorde, why wouldn’t you wear a Rolex GMT?