Which watch do you wear to your buddy’s wedding when your buddy is not only Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce but also marrying pop super-mega star Taylor Swift?
For Patrick Mahomes, who cut a dashing figure in a midnight-blue tux on July 3rd at Kelce’s wedding to Taylor Swift, the choice was unconventional. As an Hublot ambassador, one might have expected him to slap on a svelte Classic Fusion, or perhaps even a sleek Big Bang. But he sprung for something totally out of left field with the MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System All Black—a timepiece that looks more like some kind of strange fusion reactor at the center of the Starship Enterprise than a wristwatch.
Rather than being contained in a round or rectangular case, the MP-10 is housed in a transparent, tonneau-shaped case made from microblasted black ceramic and polished sapphire with anti-reflective treatment. Nothing about this watch is regular, including the way you read the time. Scanned from top to bottom, it features four continuously rotating displays that show the hours, minutes, the power reserve in green and red, and passing seconds inscribed directly on a one-minute tourbillon inclined at 35°. Set via the back of the case, its 592-component Hublot cal. HUB9013 movement is automatically wound via two weights that flank the time display and features a power reserve of 48 hours.
Such a design is emblematic of Hublot’s Exceptional Timepieces collection, which contains everything from the MP-11 with 14-day power reserve to the MP-13 tourbillon with bi-axis retrograde display to the flower-shaped MP-15 designed in collaboration with Takashi Murakami. But while many of these models—innovative as they are—are immediately recognizable as wristwatches, the MP-10 is something else entirely. Sure, someone used to the whimsical designs of MB&F or the quirky clocks of L’Epée might not even blink at the automotive aesthetics of its piston engine-looking architecture. But for those unversed in haute horlogerie GPHG submissions, it makes quite the first impression.
Given its bulk and the business of its design, the MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System All Black is certainly not conventional dress watch territory. The timepieces paired with tuxedos are typically thin, hand-wound, feature three (or even just two) hands, and come on a simple black leather strap. This Hublot, on the other hand, looks like a prop from Starship Troopers. But frankly—that’s what makes Mahomes’s choice so much fun, especially when paired with conventional black-tie attire.
After all, when you’re one the highest-paid (and most successful) quarterbacks in the NFL, you can afford to let your hair down a little bit.
