Virgil Abloh — watch collection

About Virgil Abloh’s watch collection

Virgil Abloh was one of the most influential creative figures of the 21st century. Born in Rockford, Illinois, he trained as an architect and civil engineer before pivoting into fashion and cultural design, eventually becoming the artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear in 2018 — the first Black artistic director in the house's history. Simultaneously, he ran Off-White, the Milan-based luxury streetwear label he founded in 2013, which reshaped how high fashion and street culture intersected. Abloh collaborated with Nike, IKEA, Mercedes-Benz, and dozens of other brands, building a cross-disciplinary practice that extended well beyond clothing. He passed away in November 2021 after a private battle with cardiac angiosarcoma.

The Virgil Abloh watch collection reflects the same layered thinking he applied to design — rooted in history but pulled toward the experimental. His most documented sighting came at Paris Fashion Week Menswear Spring/Summer 2020, where he appeared on the Louis Vuitton stage wearing a vintage Patek Philippe Nautilus reference 3700 in 18K yellow gold with a black dial, dating to approximately 1980. The 3700 is the original Nautilus, designed by Gerald Genta and launched in 1976, and a four-decade-old example in yellow gold sits at the upper end of what the vintage Nautilus market offers. Alongside Patek Philippe, Abloh was also spotted wearing pieces from Jacob & Co, the New York-based jeweler and watchmaker known for bold, high-complication designs that occupy a very different register from the restrained architecture of a Genta-designed Patek.

That combination — a 1980 Patek Philippe Nautilus and Jacob & Co — tells you something concrete about how Abloh approached objects. He was not chasing a single aesthetic or a collector's canon. The vintage Nautilus carries decades of wear and market significance; Jacob & Co operates in maximalist territory. Holding both on the wrist at different moments suggests a collector interested in contrast and reference rather than uniformity. With seven watches currently tracked in our database, the full picture of his collection is still emerging.