Jacob Elordi Wore a Legendary Cartier Tank to the ‘Priscilla’ Premiere

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What do you wear for your first major public appearance in months? If you’re Jacob Elordi at the Venice International Film Festival, you strap on that most classic and elegant of dress watches: the Cartier Tank. Dressed to the nines in a double-breasted Valentino tuxedo for the premiere of his new film Priscilla, Elordi accessorized in the form of the Tank Normale in 18K yellow gold—a perfect match for formalwear if ever there was one.

Elordi, who rose to fame in HBO’s Euphoria, couldn’t have picked a more beloved Tank model: The Normale, the legendary archival model that Cartier brought back earlier this year, is based upon the very first Tanks ever produced. Designed in 1917 and released in 1919, the original watch was modeled on a Renault tank—then a novelty on the battlefield of the First World War. While many think of the Tank Louis Cartier as the prototypical Tank model, the Normale, with its rectangular case, is much closer to the original watch.

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, about the life of Priscilla Presley, sees the young Australian actor taking on the role of the King himself. While Elvis is perhaps best known horologically for wearing a Hamilton Ventura (one of the world’s first electric watches) during the filming of Blue Hawaii in 1961—as well as a diamond-bezel, Tiffany-signed Omega sold that same year—a Cartier Tank seems a fitting choice for red-carpet wristwear. Notably, actor Austin Butler, who portrayed Elvis in, well, Elvis, is a Cartier ambassador himself, and wore a succession of Tanks during his own press tour.

Besides the Tank, Elordi has been spotted in numerous TAG Heuers, the most notable of which is probably the Monaco made famous by fellow actor Steve McQueen. (He favors the remake of the famed “Dark Lord”—the black PVD version of the steel watch with the blue dial, automatic chronograph movement, and rectangular case worn by McQueen in Le Mans.) If it’s the look of the Tank that you fancy, however, you can approximate the aesthetics of this gorgeous watch in its steel iteration by copping a Tank Must. This Tank uses a quartz movement instead of a mechanical, but brings the same amount of sartorial swagger and class to bear…minus the price tag, of course. (The Tank Must in its Large size is $3,100, while the Tank Normale in gold on a strap is $31,000.)

Any way you slice it, the Tank—in gold, in steel—simply works with a tuxedo. Or a T-shirt. Or whatever. It’s the quintessential dress watch, beloved by generations of well-dressed men—Elordi included.