Inside Bulgari and Fender’s unexpected watch collaboration

Bulgari’s partnership with guitar maker Fender, marking the 70th anniversary of the Stratocaster, sticks out for being a little outside the usual – Fender’s rock and roll glamour being in a very different key than the architectural allure of, say, Tadao Ando, whose limited-edition Serpenti Tubogas watch for Bulgari was revealed earlier in 2024. Look a little closer, though, and the partnership with Fender has more to it than sharing a little stardust.

The legendary status of the Stratocaster can be explained in listing its players, from Buddy Holly through Jimi Hendrix, Johhny Marr and on to the likes of H.E.R, but its durability lies in the constant evolution and endless variation in details of pickups and fingerboards that keep attracting new generations. Add the emergence of a collector culture around the guitar (see Fender’s Stratocaster with Saint Laurent) and booming customisation business (rocket-fuelled by Fender’s Japanese subsidiary) and the fit looks entirely natural.

The collaboration with Bulgari includes not just a watch design but also a custom Stratocaster. Made by Fender’s California-based Custom Shop, it uses an ash body with rosewood for the fingerboard, and maple for the neck, with the body finished in 1950s sunburst. Matched with metal volume and tone, it controls a design that goes nicely with the watch Bulgari chose for the collaboration, the Aluminium GMT, a 1990s design with a unique combination of aluminium and rubber that was brought back a few years ago to popular acclaim.

The Fender Limited Edition watch picks up on the sunburst body with a dial using a matching colour palette, fading from a golden-brown sunburst at the centre of the dial to a darker edge, highlighted with a cream and brown GMT scale inside the bezel. Bulgari says that the hour markers were designed to mimic the frets on the guitar.

There will be 1,200 Bulgari Aluminium GMT x Fender Limited Edition watches made, with 70 of them being offered alongside the custom guitar, and there will be a further 140 watches with a bespoke guitar-style case.

bulgari.com