EXCLUSIVE: Jaeger-LeCoultre Taps Anya Taylor-Joy as Brand Ambassador
INCOMING CALL: Jaeger-LeCoultre has revealed Anya Taylor-Joy as its latest ambassador with the release on Tuesday of a short video titled “A Call of the Heart.”
Nodding to the phone call between Jacques-David LeCoultre and Edmond Jaeger that sealed the double-barreled partnership for the Swiss watchmaker, Taylor-Joy appears on screen as a phone rings, her blonde locks swept into a high ponytail and wearing a cream suit with an open back.
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“Now, I’m ready now,” she tells the unseen caller as the camera pans from the pink gold Reverso Duetto Small model on her wrist to her face, joining the house’s ambassadors, which include Amanda Seyfried, Nicholas Hoult and South Korean actor Kim Woo-Bin.
Catherine Rénier, chief executive officer for the Richemont-owned watchmaker, said the encounter with the actress was “meant to be,” pointing to Taylor-Joy’s “long family history with polo and interest in watchmaking” while praising “her ethereal beauty, her sensitivity, her talent and hardworking ethics.”
With her British-Argentine roots, Taylor-Joy found the fact that many players wore the Reverso model “a really lovely coincidence [that] led [her] to fall in love with the brand,” after being introduced to it by Hoult.
But mechanical feats are what really sealed her appreciation for Jaeger-LeCoultre, the actress told WWD.
“The history of women not being able to wear watches and having to create the smallest watch face possible in order to be able to hide it within a design was something that I thought was rebellious in a way,” she said.
A prime example is the Calibre 101, designed in 1929 as a record-breaking smallest mechanical caliber. It was famously worn by the late Queen Elizabeth II, who sported it at her 1953 coronation, the minute watch face hiding in a double-row diamond tennis bracelet.
Since Taylor-Joy finds picking timepieces for period characters “always very fun,” the October release of “Amsterdam,” an ensemble noir comedy that includes Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Taylor Swift and Robert de Niro, might be an occasion to see what she’d pick for its ’30s setting.
After that, she’ll be back to the here-and-now with Hoult, playing a young couple about to get a taste of “The Menu,” a black comedy horror plot featuring a celebrity chef played by Ralph Fiennes.
The actress is currently filming “Furiosa,” a prequel to the 2015 post-apocalyptic action film “Mad Max: Fury Road,” slated to be released in 2024 and where Taylor-Joy will play a younger version of the titular character previously portrayed by Charlize Theron.
This latest ambassadorship comes after Taylor-Joy’s 2021 appointment as one of the faces of U.S. jeweler Tiffany & Co., owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH Mo?t Hennessy Louis Vuitton, where she subsequently fronting campaigns for its T1 and “Tiffany Knot” collections alongside Tracee Ellis Ross and Eileen Gu.
She also became global brand ambassador for Dior, representing the house’s women’s fashion and makeup later that year, and will appear alongside Yara Shahidi in a campaign for its Dior Forever foundation line due to break in January 2023.
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