Jaeger-LeCoultre names IU as its newest global brand ambassador

Jaeger-LeCoultre has named the South Korean singer and actress IU as its newest global brand ambassador. She joins a roster that already includes Anya Taylor-Joy, Jackson Yee, Kim Woo Bin, Zhang Ziyi and Lenny Kravitz. The appointment was announced alongside an interview in which IU discussed the partnership and her own relationship with time.

The maison Jaeger-LeCoultre has used the approach before. Amanda Seyfried fronted the brand's Reverso campaign in 2021, and its watches count American presidents Bill Clinton and Lyndon B. Johnson and actors Jon Hamm and Benedict Cumberbatch among their past wearers.

IU, known in South Korea by honorifics including Nation's Little Sister, Nation's Sweetheart and Nation's Daughter, has built an 18-year career spanning music and acting. Her recent television role was Ae-sun in When Life Gives You Tangerines, a project she said helped her see life a little more beautifully.

She is now filming the romantic comedy series Perfect Crown, after When Life Gives You Tangerines explored one character's entire life in depth. IU said she wanted something lighter and funnier next, and that hearing the show's soundtrack still brings back images of the village where her character lived.

In the interview, IU named the Reverso as her favorite Jaeger-LeCoultre watch. She said its classic design and distinctive beauty made it the piece she gravitates toward, and that wearing it for the campaign made her realize it suits her. Anyone who looks good in a Reverso is cool, she said.

The Reverso traces to 1931, when polo players complained that watch glass cracked on the field and the case was designed to flip out of harm's way. It remains the maison's signature model today, priced from about $4,750 for the simplest version to $37,700 for the most elaborate, in cases that range from 34.2 by 21 millimeters up to 49.4 by 29.9 millimeters.

We have flagged the Reverso before as one of the watches worth buying when money is no object, in our gift guide for men, alongside a Cartier Tank, Master & Dynamic headphones and a Montblanc Meisterstück pen.

We have also named the Reverso one of the closest case-shape matches to the Cartier Tank, alongside the Longines DolceVita. The DolceVita starts near $1,100, against the roughly $3,150 a steel Tank Must now costs.

What else IU said about the brand

IU said Jaeger-LeCoultre had long been her go-to gift for people she was especially grateful to, even before she grew more familiar with watches generally. What drew her in, she said, was the way the maison expresses its values with confidence, without ever feeling excessive. She singled out its emphasis on craftsmanship, precision and building something that lasts rather than chasing trends.

She described her first watch as an old piece with a thin black leather strap, bought at a small antique shop in the Netherlands in her twenties. She wore it for years before giving it away.

The maison did not disclose the length or financial terms of IU's ambassadorship, and neither the announcement nor her interview named a specific new model tied to the appointment. What the campaign will produce beyond the interview, in imagery or further releases, has not yet been detailed.

The maison's history and its priciest watches

Jaeger-LeCoultre was founded in 1833 by Antoine LeCoultre, generates estimated annual revenue of about $600 million and is now part of the Swiss luxury group Richemont. Known in the industry as the watchmaker's watchmaker, it has supplied movements to other Swiss houses including Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet and IWC Schaffhausen.

The manufacture is in Le Sentier, a village in Switzerland's Vallée de Joux, where about 1,300 people work across 25,000 square meters. Jaeger-LeCoultre has produced 1,231 movements in its history and holds more than 400 patents. Every watch passes what the maison calls its 1,000 Hour Control, a battery of tests that spins, freezes and pressurizes each piece before release.

Jaeger-LeCoultre's watchmaking is built on precision and complexity, and its most expensive current piece is the Hybris Mechanica Grande Sonnerie, priced at $2.5 million. The watch runs to 26 complications. That price is far above what the Reverso typically commands, showing how wide the maison's range runs, from its signature dress watch to its haute horlogerie flagship.

We separately named the Jaeger-LeCoultre 101 Reine, built on the Calibre 101 movement Queen Elizabeth II wore at her 1953 coronation, among the best watches for women. That movement, unveiled in 1929, remains the world's smallest mechanical watch movement, hand-wound and weighing just one gram.