Once upon a time, everyone wore dress watches on the red carpet. Only a barbarian would have dared to show up to a major awards show in something other than an elegant gold watch a decade ago. But in recent years, as steel sport watches like the Rolex Daytona and Patek Philippe Nautilus have dominated the collecting scene and become more permissible in formal settings, an entirely new type of timepiece has emerged—one that feels precision engineered in a lab for the red carpet of 2025. These watches are pristine enough to be paired with a tux, while still reflecting the trends of the day. And they look a lot like the piece Colman Domingo was wearing at the Oscars on Sunday night.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Domingo, one of the best-dressed men of the past couple awards seasons, has perfected the new art of the red-carpet watch. The best-actor nominee turned up to the Academy Awards wearing an Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, one of the most important sport watches ever made—maybe the most. But it doesn’t require a loupe to see that Domingo’s version wasn’t exactly standard-issue NASA. This Speedy was an off-catalog, made-to-order model that costs $160,000. It’s still the uber-practical Moonwatch, onlys all dressed up for a black-tie event—there are baguette-cut diamonds on the bezel, even more stones in place of the hour markers, and a case and bracelet crafted from Omega’s “Canopus Gold,” a mix that includes platinum, gold, palladium, and rhodium. All these ingredients make for the platonic ideal of a modern red-carpet watch.

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Vincent Wulveryck@Cartier

Domingo wasn’t the only Oscars attendee to figure out this formula, either. Sebastian Stan wore a glittery version of Cartier’s Santos, the square watch originally devised for Brazilian pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont in 1904. The Santos has come a long way from its roots in aviation—and the one on Stan’s wrist practically left the atmosphere. On first glance, the watch appears all yellow gold, from the bezel to the champagne dial, with dozens of diamonds dotted along the edges. But the key to this alchemy is that Stan’s Santos doesn’t forget what made it a hit in the first place: Look beyond all the gold and you’ll find the stainless steel case lurking below. Not to be outdone, Michelle Yeoh took Richard Mille’s futuristic RM 07-01 and turned it into a canvas for diamonds—resulting in a piece that’s blingy enough for Hollywood’s biggest night while retaining all of its core sport watch qualities.

Frazer Harrison

While the look of red-carpet watches has changed over the years, perhaps the biggest difference is the thought and care that goes into their selection and presentation nowadays. Shirt cuffs and jacket sleeves are often altered to make watches more visible, and the talent now cares more deeply about the pieces they wear (at times, admittedly, in a bid for potential sponsorship deals). Now it appears all that time in the lab has generated a big-brained approach to watches. In pieces like the diamond-set Speedy and Santos, all the trends of the past several years—delicate dress pieces, burly sport watches, and high-flying bling—all come together in watches designed to be worn on the biggest possible stages.