Designer Karl Lagerfeld spotted wearing a Rolex

In this striking archival photograph, Karl Lagerfeld — one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century fashion — wears a yellow gold Rolex 'Stelline' reference 6062 on his wrist, a pairing that says everything about the designer's famously precise aesthetic sensibility. The image captures a collector instinct that ran as deep as his eye for a perfectly cut jacket.

The Rolex reference 6062 is among the most complex wristwatches the Geneva manufacture ever produced in series. Introduced around 1950 and in production for only a handful of years, it houses an automatic movement with triple calendar — displaying date, day, and month — alongside a moonphase complication. The defining visual feature is the dial itself: twelve star-shaped 'stelline' hour markers that give the watch its collector nickname. Rolex produced the 6062 in yellow gold, pink gold, and stainless steel, with the steel variants representing some of the most aggressively contested lots in vintage auction rooms today.

Production numbers were always modest. Estimates consistently place the yellow gold run at around 350 examples, pink gold at approximately 50, and steel pieces in the tens rather than hundreds. That scarcity, combined with the movement's genuine mechanical complexity and Rolex's mid-century quality standards, has elevated the 6062 to a position alongside the reference 8171 — the 'Padellone' — as one of the twin pillars of serious vintage Rolex collecting. Condition, dial originality, and bracelet presence are decisive factors at auction.

Lagerfeld's relationship with exceptional objects was well documented. His private collections — books, art, furniture, cameras — reflected a mind that pursued quality and rarity as ends in themselves rather than as status signals. A 'Stelline' in yellow gold fits that profile exactly: understated to the untrained eye, immediately legible to anyone who knows what they are looking at.

On the current market, yellow gold Rolex 6062 examples in strong condition regularly achieve between 150,000 and 350,000 USD at major auction houses, with exceptional or historically provenance examples pushing considerably beyond that ceiling. Steel references have crossed 500,000 USD. No official retail price exists for this vintage reference.