Jean Reno wears an IWC Portugieser

In Daniel Cohen's Le Chef (2012), Jean Reno plays Alexandre Lagarde, a three-Michelin-star chef defending his classical kitchen against a corporate push toward molecular gastronomy, with Michael Youn as the eager young cook who becomes his ally. During a televised cooking demonstration, in his toque and apron, the watch shows on Lagarde's wrist: a time-only IWC Portugieser, white dial, slim leaf hands, a small sub-seconds register near six o'clock, on a dark leather strap. The Portugieser traces back to a 1939 IWC commission for two Portuguese merchants who wanted a wristwatch as accurate as a marine chronometer, which gave it the large, clean, restrained dial it still wears. There is a real-world tie here too: Reno has been an IWC friend of the brand for years, and in 2010 he starred in the company's own Portugieser-relaunch short film, The Spirit of Navigation, playing a navigator threading time and space. A conservative classicist who refuses to modernize his menu, wearing the most conservative watch IWC makes, is about as on-the-nose as casting gets, and it works.