Let’s Unpack the KITH x TAG Heuer F1 Watch
This story is written by Highsnobiety's watch contributor Brynn Wallner. You can read more here.
“But why KITH ?”
We were all thinking it. I just said it out loud and straight up to the TAG executives during a group interview in a plush hotel suite overlooking the beach. We were gathered there because less than a month prior, TAG Heuer had debuted a limited reissue of their iconic Formula 1 watch collection in collaboration with KITH. Why, I wanted to know, after years of anticipation, and about as much hype as any watch could hope for, had TAG Heuer not just rereleased it without the co-branding and lane-crossing necessary of what we were all in Miami to celebrate?
Nicholas Bieybuck, TAG’s Heritage Director, Julien Tournare, TAG’s current CEO, and George Ciz, Chief Marketing Officer, are not men who sweat confrontations like these. Rather, they’d anticipated it:“Why?” was the question on everyone’s lips.
After all, so many people have been bugging TAG Heuer to reissue the F1 for years now; and, in fact, according to the execs, many other brands had approached them for a collaboration before they landed on KITH. Since my induction into the watch industry, I’ve personally implored former TAG CEO, Frédéric Arnault, to bring back this famous watch, as had GQ’s Cam Wolf and Highsnobiety car editor Jonathan Schley (who both, by the way, claim that they were first to insert the Formula 1 back into the public imagination). Along with persistent chatter and old-school enthusiasts posting their original pieces online, there’d been a groundswell that no doubt helped presage a surge in demand for the vintage references on the secondary market (eBay reports that, in March 2024, it was the second most sold watch on their website).
In other words, this is a watch that’s close to a lot of hearts.
I didn’t grow up with a Formula 1 watch, but I became enamored with it in the early days of learning about watches, when I was working in the editorial department of Sotheby’s. After they let me go in 2020, and shortly after I started my femme-forward watch Instagram account, Dimepiece, one of the first photos I posted was of ‘90s-era Cameron Diaz, chicly pairing her 35mm Formula 1 watch with jeans, a T-shirt and her Hollywood smile. To see it on the wrist of someone like Diaz, who I’d idolized since her role as the ditzy but fierce Natalie in 2000’s Charlie’s Angels, helped me understand how watches could be worn. In particular, the TAG Heuer Formula 1 represented for me a crossover piece – fun, gender-neutral, casual and cheap while bearing the respected name of a heritage brand. Seeing it on the wrist of Diaz, Pamela Anderson in BayWatch (via Getty Image stalking) and Lucy Liu’s, in one her earliest roles, the 1999 comedy Payback, it was solidified in my mind as a piece that begged for a re-issue.
Most of us caught wind of the KITH x TAG Heuer co-branded rerelease long before it was confirmed. I remember exactly when I learned of it because I happened to be standing across the street from KITH's multi-story Lafayette Street location. Scrolling Instagram, I saw Ronnie Fieg on HODINKEE’s “Talking Watches” show, in which he deep dives into his relationship with his very first watch, the F1. When he was 12, his mother worked at Tourneau, and after meeting her sales goals, she gifted him an F1, sparking a lifelong infatuation. From then on, Fieg started collecting NOS (New Old Stock) F1s – primarily from Japan, where the watches were particularly appreciated – amassing a collection that now represents every color of the rainbow. Eventually he moved onto heavier hitters – Rolex, Patek, Audemars Piguet – each one a gift to himself after every business accomplishment, but that first TAG Heuer Formula 1 watch remains the most important in his collection.
I looked up from my phone and stared across Lafayette, perhaps leering at the hordes of roped off tourists waiting in line to enter the KITH store. But then I leered at myself, waiting in line for overpriced cookies at Levain. Who was I to judge? Cookies have nothing on KITH, whose fame (or infamy) for drawing crowds and lines to its brick-and-mortar retail spaces stands strong even as most others face the ongoing battle with add-to-cart crisis shopping. At that moment, I knew that the much-anticipated Formula 1 re-issue would be a collaboration with KITH. And despite my new understanding of Feig’s relationship to the F1, and despite my newfound reflection as one who, like everyone across the street, also stands in lines for goods they may or may not need, it made me sad.
So I tried to maintain some diplomacy as I fired off questions to the execs in Miami, who had, after all, flown me out and put me up at the Le Labo-scented Edition Hotel, and thus were not supposed to hear ingratitude or sadness. But the heart wants what the heart wants!
Without skipping a beat, the men began to answer in turn. They leveraged words like “authenticity” to talk about the partnership with KITH, and the illustrious history of TAGx F1, that led us to this point:In the beginning, there was only Heuer. Founded in 1860, it was an early pioneer of the chronograph – a timekeeping complication that fulfills, essentially, the role of a stopwatch. Heuer went on to become the first brand to engage with a professional racing driver, Jo Siffert, in the late ‘60s, naming him a brand ambassador as well as putting their logo on his car. Seeing this, Ferrari enlisted Heuer as the official timekeeper for their newly revamped RACING team in 1971 in exchange for logo placement on the cars. And thus, the modern race car was born: vehicles so tattooed with logos they’re inseparable from their sponsors. In 1971, this was ingenious marketing.
Meanwhile, the engineering, aviation and hospitality conglomerate TAG, which stands for Techniques D’Avant Garde, was starting to integrate itself into the car racing world. It began with a partnership with the Williams Formula 1 team in the early 1980s. By 1983, TAG had acquired a stake in McLaren, resulting in what would become one of Formula One’s defining relationships, per Nicholas Bieybuck, TAG Heuer’s heritage director.
By the early ‘80s, Heuer was suffering under lackluster ownership. Coincidentally, TAG was seeking a European luxury brand to attach its name to. One thing led to another and “TAG Heuer” was born. Now the new logo just needed a watch on which to debut.
Luckily, Swiss designer Eddy Burgener was already working on a new watch built to adapt to the evolving sensibilities of the times, and the tail-end of the watch industry’s “quartz crisis” (expensive mechanical watch movements were overtaken by Japanese made quartz batteries that rendered winding nearly obsolete, threatening the very existence of the Swiss heritage brands). Rather than resisting this new technology, Heuer welcomed the use of quartz. For Burgener’s design, they went all-in on experimentation in aesthetic and construction, playing with new materials like plastic and rubber in vibrant colors.
In 1986, the truly avant-garde F1 watch was born, making it the very first watch to bear the conjoined name of TAG Heuer. It came in two inclusive sizes (28mm and 35mm) and a variety of hot colors, perfectly in tune with the bright, fun-forward 1980s.
And just as Patek Philippe was advertising its 1976 Nautilus as “One of the World’s Costliest Watches is Made of Steel,” the F1 debuted for the fuck-you price of $136.50. TAG Heuer’s bet on assimilation paid off. It sold three million of the boldly hued, battery powered pieces over the 10 years they were in production.
Since then, TAG Heuer has already revamped and reissued their classic Aquaracer, Carrera and Monaco lines. The F1 was due for her moment, explained the Heritage Director, and – to answer my question – starting with KITH was the way they wanted to jump-start it and generate excitement.
I should be happy, right? I – we – are getting what we wanted. The F1, the nostalgia boost, the loyally executed ‘80s silhouette constructed with upgraded materials.
To some, it’s not so simple.
“Those that enjoyed the watch the first time, yearning to jump aboard the nostalgia train with the perfect, fun, sporty watch for the summer of 2024, may find themselves let down,” laments Alan Bedwell, the New York-based antiques and vintage watch purveyor known as Foundwell. “The heavily branded launch with a company that resonates with very few of ‘us’ has left me thinking of what could have been.”
To understand who this “us” actually is (and is not), it’s important to step back again and examine the origins of KITH.
After 15 years of climbing the ranks at the legendary downtown NYC sneaker chain David Z, Ronnie Fieg channeled his experience in buying and designing by opening his own shop that would retail the sneakers driving everyone mad (I’m thinking about the Tiffany Dunks), and also provide a welcoming atmosphere to shoppers, inviting them to hang out. This quasi social-retail experience is common now, with even the stodgiest Swiss heritage brands going for the “laid back” boutique feel – but it was novel when KITH opened in 2011 in Brooklyn, not far from where Fieg grew up in Queens.
If you’re unfamiliar with this era, do yourself a favor and watch HBO’s “How to Make it in America” – the short-lived TV show about two dudes trying to hit it big in the downtown New York scene. It’s a time capsule for an exciting moment in the city where not every party was branded, and yet there was a commercialized flair to the social life. It was the tail-end of the “indie-sleaze” era, when photographers like The Cobra Snake and Lastnightsparty documented intimate, raw nightlife moments, instantaneously posting their photos online, lending visibility to a world that would have otherwise remained in its bubble. People were becoming more public with social media and the timing was ripe for someone like Fieg to come in and create a more premium, socially oriented retail experience in which people actually did hang out – so much so that they wanted merch, not just from the brands sold at KITH, but from KITH itself. They wanted to rep the store. The brand’s tagline “Just Us” says it all.
Fast forward to the current era. Ronnie Fieg was seated next to TAG Heuer’s then-CEO, Frédéric Arnault, at a dinner in 2021. As the story goes, Fieg raved about the Formula 1 watch, sharing his emotional story and planting the seed for this collaboration. Two years later, the KITH x Tag Heuer F1 was on the market.
Within the larger contemporary watch landscape, TAG Heuer remains a reliable, coveted heritage brand – and yet its mainstream appeal has shrunk significantly since the ‘90s and early 2000s, when it seemed Formula 1 or a Professional was on everyone’s wrists. According to Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult’s (slightly contested) annual Swiss Watch Industry report, TAG Heuer has fallen to the 15th most popular watch brand in the world – high up, for sure, but not enjoying the viral success of competitors like Rolex, Cartier and Audemars Piguet.
Under LVMH’s leadership, which acquired TAG Heuer in 1999, the brand has in recent years been positioned as more up-market, exemplified (in the most drastic instance) by their newly announced $139,000 Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph. This six-figure price-tag certainly caused a stir amongst the watch-heads, signifying a direction for the brand very much in line with its ruthlessly luxurious parent company.
“It’s been an interesting month as a TAG Heuer enthusiast, as I have found myself ‘defending’ their Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph… and now their $1,500 TAG Heuer x KITH Formula 1 watches,” says collector Jeff Stein (aka OnTheDash), regarded in the industry as a TAG Heuer scholar. The Monaco represents a “spare-no-expense approach to deliver the ultimate chronograph complication,” whereas the Formula 1 is the (relatively) accessible priced clout play.
“After Ronnie approached us, there was a big debate internally,” says Bieybuck, the heritage director. “Should we partner with a brand, or should we just do it ourselves? And there was a lot of back and forth – some might call it indecision,” he laughs. “Of course, we could have absolutely done it ourselves and it would have been successful, but the key thing is for us to expand the audience.”
And what exactly does the KITH audience represent to TAG Heuer? I rattled off words like “lifestyle,” “young people,” and another journalist chirped the word “disruption,” all drawing enthusiastic nods from the TAG people.
“They’re opinion leaders,” added George Ciz, the CMO. “They tend to have an influence on their friends, their circle, you know?”
“And they dare,” beamed Julien Tornare, the CEO. “They don’t want to be like everyone else. They wear things that are not common. And, honestly, when you put the F1 watch on your wrist, you’re going to get comments because it’s not similar to most watches. It’s risky. It’s fun.”
Are the people waiting in line at KITH really “opinion leaders”? By choosing to buy items pre-selected and deemed cool by KITH’s buying team, are they diverging from the norm?
The (mostly online, knee-jerk) response to the collaboration would suggest otherwise. When the embargo lifted on May 1, watch enthusiasts came to Instagram to express their disdain for the partnership, mostly using puke emojis and a collection of comments best categorized under the three pillars of: “the watch is overpriced”, “why KITH?!” (again) and “no one asked for this.”
They didn’t like the logo, in which TAG was replaced by KITH, reading “KITH HEUER.” They didn’t like the price: $1500 compared to the original’s $136.50 (or $370 adjusted for inflation). Steep, even with the material upgrade. They didn’t like that the technical verbiage on the watch’s dial, indicating its 200M depth rating, was replaced by KITH’s “Just Us” slogan. In this case, the “us” doesn’t feel like us in the watch world.
“I fully understand the decision to partner with a powerhouse streetwear brand like KITH,” says Perri Dash, watch collector and co-host/founder of Wrist Check Pod, addressing how polarizing the release turned out to be. Regarding the price: “What better way to ward off any ‘lowbrowness’ for what would otherwise be a $500 watch release than to inflate the price and release it with the king of collaborations?”
It's not personal, it’s just business, following the playbook laid down by numerous other heritage brands who’ve initiated a vintage revamp with the help of a limited-edition “hype” collaboration, engineered specifically to test the waters.
And Jeff Stein, the Heuer scholar, sees the hype as, ultimately, a win for the very insular watch community. “To say that the KITH Heuer Formula 1 is not for ‘watch people’ strikes me as bizarre,” he says, having just bought himself a blue rubber version (one of the lucky few able to get his hands on one before the entire collection sold out within two days of its release). “This watch is attracting enthusiasts who had probably never explored TAG Heuer’s standard collections, and that’s a good thing.”
Tail between my legs, I can’t help but agree. But… Do I have qualms with the manner in which it was executed? Yes. I still think that the decision to impose the KITH name into the classic TAG HEUER logo was unnecessary. In his celebratory speech over a star-studded dinner in Miami’s design district, however, Ronnie Fieg declared the logo integration a “non-starter,” as it is something he’s done with every single one of his preceding collaborations, ranging from BMW to Fruity Pebbles.
“I mean, the logo is a funny one,” said Bieybuck. “We’ve seen the comments, and, honestly, we had the same debate internally. It was split 50/50 between those who were for it and who were against it. For me, I was all for it. I said, ‘Look, we should be confident in who we are as a brand. If Dior and Gucci and everyone else is prepared to do it, why can’t we, another major luxury brand?’ People know who we are, it’s one launch, it’s limited edition, it’s one weekend of the year. There shouldn’t be an issue here.”
As he played down the significance of the altered logo, the CEO chimed in, proudly validating the decision as daring. “Many watch brands would never, ever, ever touch their logo. This industry is very conservative – it’s Swiss,” Tornare said with a laugh. “And I think our collaboration, with the new logo, is in line with our avant-garde, innovative spirit.”
No matter what the commenters thinkt, the “KITH HEUER” logo was not only printed on the watches’ dials and the promotional vintage-inspired merch, but also prominently positioned on the Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 cars – money was made, and so was history, no doubt.
And, as a reminder to the rest of “us," this F1 watch collection is a limited edition. It’s a launch that will, hopefully (very likely) kick off future F1s, restored with the TAG Heuer logo that was, for its time – much like this – disruptive and polarizing.
