Television presenter Valérie Damidot spotted wearing a Rolex

French television presenter Valérie Damidot, best known for hosting D&CO on M6, was recently photographed wearing what appears to be a stainless steel Rolex Datejust 36 on her wrist, paired casually with silver bangles and a denim boilersuit. The sighting confirms a recurring pattern among French media personalities: a preference for classic, tool-adjacent Rolex references over flashier complications.

The watch in the upper image is clearly a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust, displaying the characteristic silver sunray dial with applied baton hour markers, Roman numeral minute chapter ring at the outer edge, and a cyclops lens magnifying the date aperture at 3 o'clock. The smooth, non-fluted bezel and the Oyster bracelet with solid centre links point toward reference 16200 — the definitive 36mm stainless steel Datejust produced from 1989 to 2007. Powering the ref. 16200 is Rolex's Cal. 3135, a 28,800 vph movement with Parachrom hairspring and a 48-hour power reserve, still regarded as one of the most reliable automatic movements in Swiss watchmaking.

The Datejust 36 ref. 16200 occupies a curious sweet spot in the collector market. It was the quintessential 'invisible luxury' watch for decades — ubiquitous enough to be ignored, yet precise and durable enough to earn respect on second look. Post-2020, collector appetite for 'transitional' and 'no-date adjacent' vintage Rolex pieces has pushed prices for clean examples of the 16200 upward, particularly those retaining original dials without service replacements.

Valérie Damidot has built her public persona around accessible yet considered taste — renovating ordinary French homes with colour-forward, practical design. Her choice of a Datejust in its most restrained steel-on-steel configuration reads as entirely consistent: no diamonds, no two-tone, no Jubilee bracelet flourish. Just the watch as Rolex intended it.

On the grey market, ref. 16200 examples in excellent condition currently trade between $7,500 and $11,000 depending on box, papers, and dial originality. Official retail for current-generation Datejust 36 equivalents (ref. 126200) sits at approximately $7,150, making the pre-owned 16200 a premium-priced vintage proposition — and a quietly intelligent one at that.