How the Rolex Oyster Became Watchmaking’s Ultimate Classic

When Rolex does something unexpected, the watch world pays attention. So when the Geneva-based watchmaker chose to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Rolex Oyster not with a hulking collector’s piece but with the elegant Oyster Perpetual in case sizes ranging from 28 mm to 41 mm, it felt like more than yet another product launch. With its clean dial, round bezel, slightly curved links on the bracelet, and absence of a date window, the Oyster Perpetual proves that great design doesn’t require wholesale reinvention. Rolex evolves by tiny increments, its watches remaining instantly recognizable while never being exactly the same. For example, the Oyster Perpetual centenary editions include a model crafted entirely in yellow gold. “It’s like the luxury version of the perfect pair of blue jeans,” says Brynn Wallner, founder of the women’s watch platform Dimepiece. “It goes with everything.”

Rolex didn’t set out to create a style icon. When the Oyster debuted, in 1926, wristwatches were still considered fragile objects, easily damaged by dust or water. The Oyster changed that. Taking its name from the mollusk that keeps its interior protected from the elements, it featured the first commercially successful waterproof case, making the watch practical enough for everyday life. Its economical, uncluttered design proved just as revolutionary and signaled a sea change for watchmakers. Gérald Genta, the revered creative force behind Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak and Patek Philippe’s Nautilus, once admitted that his greatest professional regret was never having designed an Oyster. He later called it “the biggest success in watchmaking.”

Its triumph, however, owes as much to culture as to engineering. The Oyster has been worn by explorers, screen icons, and athletes alike, from Sir Edmund Hillary to Steve McQueen to Roger Federer. It has become shorthand for accomplishment without ever being showy. Long before celebrity ambassadors became standard marketing practice, Rolex found one in Mercedes Gleitze, the pioneering British endurance swimmer whose fame and daring invited comparisons to Amelia Earhart in the popular imagination. In 1927, Gleitze wore an Oyster during an attempt to swim the English Channel, helping prove Rolex’s extraordinary waterproof claims under unforgiving conditions.

Wallner sees that association as remarkably prescient: Rather than treating women as an afterthought, Rolex placed one at the very heart of the Oyster’s origin story. “It’s a cool alignment that adds a nice layer of history,” she says. “The fact that they partnered with a female athlete is a testament to how forward-thinking Rolex was even then.” So was the fact that Rolex married technical precision with adornment in such a seamless way—after all, virtually every watch brand has made a waterproof model for decades, but very few have reached the Oyster’s level of notoriety.

In retrospect, Rolex’s early partnership with Gleitze foreshadowed a broader truth: Women would help shape not only the Oyster’s history, but also the way all watches are styled. Timepieces are now increasingly treated like jewelry, layered with bracelets and bangles rather than worn on their own. For all of the Oyster’s technical accomplishments, its unparalleled design is what everyone notices first. “Half the women I know,” Wallner jokes, “don’t even bother setting the time.”

Lead image, clockwise from top: A 1927 ad touting the miraculous features of Rolex’s new invention; Roger Federer at Wimbledon, 2017; British swimmer Mercedes Gleitze, an early celebrity adopter of the Oyster, 1928; a scene from the 1995 film Apollo 13. Center image: the Rolex Oyster Perpetual 28.

Credits clockwise from top left: Courtesy of Rolex (3); Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Universal.