It is tempting, when writing about Andy Warhol, to start with the Campbell’s Soup cans or the Marilyns. But before the Factory, before the Silver Clouds and the silk screens, there was Andrew Warhola of Pittsburgh: the sickly son of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants, confined to bed with St. Vitus’ dance at the age of eight. The young boy passed endless hours clipping and pasting the glossy faces of Hollywood stars, a private devotion to icons that would, in adulthood, become both his life and his work.

By the early 1950s, the fragile Pittsburgh boy had reinvented himself as a Manhattan star. Warhol was Madison Avenue’s most decorated illustrator, celebrated for his witty I. Miller shoe ads in the New York Times — line drawings embellished with gold leaf and hand lettering. These campaigns won him a Coty Award and an insider’s understanding of advertising’s alchemy: that objects could be transformed not by substance, but by surface.

The step from Madison Avenue to Pop was therefore less a leap than a reframing. When Warhol hung Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1962, he wasn’t abandoning commerce, he was elevating it. The soup can, like the shoe, became art once repeated, stylized, and stripped of context. Soon Marilyn Monroe was treated as if she were a brand, while Richard Nixon appeared in fluorescent hues in Vote McGovern (1972), a screenprint whose garish palette was also a political dagger. Consumerism, celebrity, and politics: all became one continuous visual language.

Warhol’s compulsion to collect ran parallel to his art. Friends recalled daily shopping expeditions — sometimes masterpieces, sometimes amusing junk. He bought Navajo blankets, folk art, Art Deco furniture, jewellery, toys, and 175 cookie jars. From 1974 onwards he began sealing away the detritus of his days — letters, catalogues, receipts — into 612 “Time Capsules.” For Warhol, nothing was too trivial to archive; accumulation itself became an artwork.

After his death in 1987, the scale of the compulsion became public. Sotheby’s staged a ten-day marathon sale in April and May of 1988, selling nearly 10,000 objects across 2,500 lots. Watches and jewellery filled an entire volume of the six-part catalogue. And just when the hammer seemed to have fallen on the estate, a hidden cache of jewellery and watches was discovered in his East 66th Street townhouse.

Sotheby’s returned that December with The Andy Warhol Collection: Jewelry and Watches, Part II, in which almost 100 additional timepieces crossed the block. Provenance notes for a pink-gold Patek Philippe ref. 2526 trace it directly to that sale, while Christie’s has since brought to market his self-winding perpetual calendar, the ref. 3448, proudly catalogued as “the personal property of Andy Warhol.”

Piaget was central to this watch trove. The maison itself publicly states that he owned seven, four of which are now in its private collection. The “magical seven” is the official figure but given Warhol’s voracious shopping and the dispersal of his estate, the true number may never be known. The first, by all accounts, arrived in 1973: the reference 15102, a bold stepped cushion-shaped watch conceived to house the Beta 21 quartz calibre. Its proportions made it look less like a conventional timepiece than a small sculpture for the wrist.

Piaget in that era was more than a watchmaker; it was a society. Under Yves Piaget, the maison cultivated a glamorous clientele of film stars, royals and artists, its boutiques in Geneva, Palm Beach and New York doubling as salons. Jackie Kennedy wore her jade-dial Piaget, Elizabeth Taylor was photographed in sculptural cuff watches, and Salvador Dalí collaborated with the brand on surreal golden objets. The Piaget Society blurred the line between luxury retail and nightlife, a natural habitat for Warhol, who entered Yves’s circle in 1979.

From that point, their paths intertwined: they were photographed together at galas, spotted at Studio 54, and, most memorably, Warhol even trained his camera on Yves Piaget at a Princess Grace Foundation event in Washington, D.C. Yves was not a collector in Warhol’s sense of obsessive archiving, but he did court artists, commissioning Dalí and embracing culture as a form of display. That mix of art, celebrity and spectacle was exactly what Warhol wanted to live among, and exactly what he turned into image.

Warhol’s fascination with watches went even further than collecting. In the mid-1980s he collaborated with Movado on the Artists’ Series, designing the Times/5 watch of 1987, which displayed five tiny dials that captured multiple time zones. It was less about practical functionality than about imagery and concept, perfectly in line with his art. The watch became part of a limited series that paired Movado with contemporary artists, and Warhol’s contribution remains the most famous. That he chose this design underlines how deeply he saw timepieces not as instruments, but as canvases — opportunities to play with repetition, surface and symbolism.

Movado, Andy Warhol ‘Times 5’ Nos (Image: Christie’s)

For the past decade, Piaget’s bold cushion-shaped watch from the 1970s has lived under the name “Black Tie,” a label attached when the maison reissued the design in 2014. Collectors whispered about its Warhol connection, but nothing was ever said out loud — for good reason. The Andy Warhol Foundation has long been exacting about how his name is used, fiercely protective of his image and uncompromising about licensing.

That caution kept the watch in a kind of limbo: iconic, yes, but unofficial. It was only in 2024, after Piaget struck a formal agreement with the Foundation, that the watch was allowed to wear Warhol’s name. The renaming was more than a marketing flourish; it was a signal of legitimacy, an acknowledgement that this wasn’t just a model once worn by an artist, but a watch intertwined with his story and now endorsed by the estate that guards his legacy.

Continuing celebrations of Piaget’s 150th anniversary in 2024, the Black Tie Andy Warhol is cased in rose gold framing a malachite dial

Warhol’s famous quip about the Cartier Tank — that he wore it not to tell time but because it was “the watch to wear” — applied equally to Piaget. They were signs, images, badges of belonging. He is even known to have given away watches as tokens of friendship: a novelty Gumby watch signed and gifted to Keith Haring surfaced at auction decades later, proof that in his circle a watch could become a keepsake, a small artwork in its own right. Whether he ever gifted a Piaget is unconfirmed, but it would hardly be out of character.

Andy Warhol signed on the Gumby watch and gifted to Keith Haring (Image: Sotheby’s)

Which brings us forward to 2025 and the Andy Warhol Watch “Collage” Limited Edition, the first capsule to emerge from Piaget’s formal partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This new watch, limited to just 50 numbered pieces, reimagines Warhol’s 1973 Piaget through the lens of his 1986 polaroid collage self-portrait.

Piaget Andy Warhol Watch “Collage” Limited Edition

The stepped 45 x 43mm case, with inset crown, is cast in 18-carat yellow gold, a deliberate echo of Warhol’s own watch and otherwise absent from the current Andy Warhol Watch collection. Its dial is a miniature artwork in marquetry, with a black onyx base complemented by inlays of Namibian serpentine, pink opal, and green chrysoprase, each stone cut into thin slices and pieced together to form an abstract, layered composition. No two dials are alike, the natural veining of the stones ensuring each of the 50 watches is a one-off.

The black onyx base complemented by inlays of Namibian serpentine, pink opal, and green chrysoprase, each stone cut into thin slices and pieced together to form an abstract, layered composition

On the back, a satin-finished gold case carries an engraving of Warhol’s 1986 Polaroid collage self-portrait, accompanied by Piaget’s logo, the Foundation’s insignia, and Warhol’s own signature. Inside is Piaget’s in-house self-winding caliber 501P1 with 40 hours of power reserve, circular Côtes de Genève finishing and a thickness of just over 8mm. A deep-green alligator strap and yellow gold ardillon buckle complete the composition, chosen to add richness without overwhelming the dial.

An engraving of Warhol’s 1986 Polaroid collage self-portrait, accompanied by Piaget’s logo, the Foundation’s insignia, and Warhol’s own signature

When Piaget’s design team began work on this edition, they could have taken the easy road with a soup can, an Electric Chair, or a gun-toting Elvis engraved dial side or on the caseback. Instead, guided by the Foundation, they spent six months immersed in Warhol’s archives before settling on collage and colour as the themes. The result is a watch that avoids cliché, suggesting Warhol without being obvious, and standing on its own as a piece of horological art. It is a faithful echo of Warhol’s own use of watches, not to measure time, but as objects, images and symbols.

In that sense, the Andy Warhol Watch ‘Collage’ Limited Edition is more than a tribute. It is a continuation of Warhol’s practice of turning consumption into culture, of transforming everyday objects into icons. For Piaget, it anchors the lore of the magical seven in a tangible modern collectible. For collectors, it offers not just a watch, but a fragment of Pop history rendered in stone and gold. And for Warhol, who once said art is what you can get away with, it is the perfect reminder that sometimes the most radical thing you can do is wear your art on your wrist.

Tech Specs: Piaget Andy Warhol Watch “Collage” Limited Edition

Movement: Piaget 501P1 in-house automatic caliber; 40-hour power reserve; Côtes de Genève decoration; thickness 8.08mm
Functions: Hours and minutes
Case: 45 x 43mm stepped cushion; 18-carat yellow gold with vertical satin finish; anti-reflective sapphire crystal; solid yellow gold caseback engraved with Warhol’s self-portrait, Piaget logo, Foundation insignia, and Warhol’s signature; 30m of water resistance
Dial: Marquetry of black onyx base with inlays of Namibian serpentine (yellow), pink opal, and green chrysoprase; each dial unique
Strap: Deep-green alligator-leather with 18-carat yellow gold ardillon buckle
Availability: 50 individually numbered pieces worldwide