Up Close: the Rolex Cellini Moonphase
Launched at Baselworld 2017, the Rolex Cellini Moonphase is the most complicated watch in the Cellini line-up and Rolex’s first moonphase in half a century.
By Chris Hall
Rolex re-launched the Cellini collection in 2014, to a lukewarm reception. It’s not that they aren’t good watches – they come with the same build quality as any Rolex Oyster – but there’s just not the same love for seeing Rolex “do dressy” that there is for the Oyster collection. This year Rolex released the Cellini Moonphase; can this convert the doubters and add a bit of punch and personality to the dressier side of the mega-brand"
Cellini is a victim of Rolex’s success, really. The Oyster models have all existed for decades and Rolex has done an excellent job of stewarding those designs into the 21st century, slowly and surely modernising them where necessary. Sure, the die-hard fans rant and rave about the addition of a cyclops to the Sea-Dweller’s date window, but that’s exactly the point: when that’s all you’ve got to be unhappy about, things are not going too badly. The Cellini on the other hand, is new. Rolex fans don’t like “new”. It doesn’t have a fifty-year old design to fall back on and it is never going to be the watch that comes to mind when you think of a Rolex. If anything, the branding gets in the way – if “Cellini” was spun off as a top-level...
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