Audemars Piguet Launches Collab with Travis Scott in Latest Culture Play

Swiss luxurious watch mannequin Audemars Piguet is about to renew its longstanding ties to American widespread tradition with the discharge of a watch collaboration with hip-hop star Travis Scott and his label Cactus Jack Information.

In partnership with Scott, Audemars Piguet will launch a limited-edition mannequin of its Royal Oak watch Thursday in a model new ceramic, along with putting out a capsule assortment of co-branded merchandise from the Swiss watchmaking dwelling and Cactus Jack.

The model new watch will most likely be formally unveiled this night time and may attribute quite a lot of motifs from Scott’s Cactus Jack label, along with a moon half adorned with a luminous mannequin of the hip mannequin’s emblem — a smiley face with its mouth sewn shut.

“Travis would possibly elevate a navy,” acknowledged Audemars Piguet’s chief authorities François-Henri Bennahmias in an distinctive interview with The Enterprise of Type. “He’s obtained such an affect. Of us observe him in a severe means.”

Scott, 32, is among the many most worthwhile hip-hop artists of his period. His fourth studio album Utopia, launched in July, had larger than 650 million worldwide streams in its opening week, making it basically probably the most commercially worthwhile hip-hop album of the yr.

The collaboration is extra prone to be remembered not just for a wristwatch co-designed by Scott, nonetheless for the gathering of hoodies, T-shirts, jackets, pyjamas, shorts and caps provided by way of Scott’s private e-commerce platform.

“Of us will go nuts after they know that AP and Travis have made merch collectively,” acknowledged Bennahmias. “It breaks nearly every code. Is it going to realize success? We’d have multiplied the quantity by a minimal of 10 situations and nonetheless been worthwhile.”

Audemars Piguet, Bennahmias acknowledged, would make “zero” income from the clothes and gear, which as a substitute would fund the Cactus Jack Foundation, which grants scholarships to disadvantaged youthful people.

The collaboration may even be remembered as François-Henri Bennahmias’s swan-song sooner than he retires from the perform of Audemars Piguet’s chief authorities on the end of this yr, a submit he took up in 2012 having joined the company practically 30 years up to now.

Bennahmias is recognised as considered one of many watch enterprise’s most disruptive and influential figures, remodeling the family-owned agency from a dusty high-end watchmaker into most likely probably the most recognised and in-demand names in luxurious.

It was Bennahmias who, whereas working the company’s US operations, launched it together with Muhammad Ali and Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Time To Give public sale throughout the yr 2000, after which forged an unlikely alliance to avenue custom with the Royal Oak Offshore Jay-Z tenth Anniversary in 2005, a watch collab extensively considered by enterprise observers to be a tipping degree for the generally conservative Swiss watch enterprise.

AP has since continued to align itself with widespread custom, nurturing high-profile relationships with stars of film, music, sports activities actions and the humanities, along with LeBron James, Kevin Hart and Ed Sheeran, powering speedy product sales growth for its watches which have a median worth of 42,000 Swiss francs ($47,970).

Bennahmias acknowledged he expects Audemars Piguet’s 2023 revenues to develop by spherical 200,000 Swiss francs to prime 2.3 billion Swiss francs ($2.6 billion).

The partnership with Scott might have been launched sooner. In June this yr, a Texas grand jury declined felony costs launched in opposition to Scott after 10 people, along with a nine-year-old girl, have been killed in a crush at a pageant he primarily based in 2021. Scott was extensively criticised for his response to the Astroworld Competitors disaster. Bennahmias declined to the touch upon the incident, nonetheless acknowledged that Audemars Piguet had waited until the jury’s alternative sooner than activating the collaboration, having first met Scott in 2020 when he was a client.