Why Rolex’s New Land-Dweller Is Such a Big Deal

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Rolex is famously known as one of the most conservative watch brands in the industry—and rightfully so. Their steady hand on the wheel is at least partially responsible for the Crown routinely lapping its competitors. Clients like that Rolex is unchanging: it means the Day-Date, Submariner, and Daytona that Lyndon Johnson, James Bond, and Paul Newman, respectively, wore decades ago are not all that different from the ones they themselves are buying in 2025. That long lineage is what made last week’s debut of the Land-Dweller, only the brand’s second new collection since 2013, such a mammoth deal.

Rolex, which typically counts new color dials and a couple of millimeters trimmed on or off as novel, revolutionized everything for the new Land-Dweller. On a surface level, the Land-Dweller is completely distinct in the Rolex catalog. The case is new, the bracelet is new, and the way these interact is also unique among the current pieces. If we got even one of these updates in any other year, it would have been a big deal. Last week, we got all the aesthetic tinkering and the Crown just happened to rethink the two-plus-century-old mechanism that’s still used by basically every watchmaker in Switzerland. “Rolex had something really innovative this year,” said Paul Boutros, the Head of Americas for Phillips auction house, “and it’ll take a lot of time for the majority of people to understand how significant what they put out is.”

What is the Land-Dweller?

Well, how rude. I haven’t even introduced you two. The Land-Dweller, in case you’ve been phoneless doing ayahuasca with Aaron Rodgers while he teases the Pittsburgh Steelers, is Rolex’s brand new model. This is the third in the Crown’s lineup for Dwellers of all stripes: those who attend to the Sea or the Sky both have dedicated watches. The Land-Dweller is meant for those shuffling around our familiar terroir. Or, as Rolex epically puts it, “The Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller is designed for those well-grounded men and women who build their own destinies, seeing opportunity in every moment.”

The case

While the watch’s design shares similarities with several hype watches of this decade—the Patek Philippe Nautilus, Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, and even Vacheron Constantin’s more recently reintroduced, but just as sexy, 222—it takes after Rolex designs dating all the way back to 1969.

Bloomberg’s Chris Rovzar, in a rare behind-the-scenes look inside Rolex, detailed that the Land-Dweller project started five years ago when “the office of general management” disseminated a brief outlining what they wanted in the new model. The brief cited two watches specifically, according to Rovzar: a 1969 Rolex that used quartz and a 1974 variation of the Datejust with a bracelet very similar to the one on today’s Land-Dweller. “It is important to say that the new watch is not a revival,” Rolex head of heritage Christophe Carrupt told Bloomberg. “But it is inspired by the DNA of the brand.”