TIME to WIN

Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton collaborates with IWC on a watch for true winners

- BRANDON FRIEDERICH

The most decorated driver on the Formula One grid is also the most fashionable. We are of course talking about Lewis Hamilton, whose unprecedented success at the pinnacle of motorsport is easily quantified in two stats: He and fellow F1 legend Michael Schumacher jointly hold the record for the most World Drivers’ Championship titles (seven), and the Hamilton solely holds the record for the most Grand Prix wins (103).

The “most fashionable” claim is not as easily quantified, but it’s still easily found in demonstrative evidence. On any given race weekend, photographers in the paddock clamor to capture images of Hamilton’s wildly varied designer garb, from a sequined boilersuit by Rick Owens to the fiery Diesel graphic T-shirt he donned for the 2023 US Grand Prix.

Fashion isn’t just an interest of Hamilton’s, it’s “an outlet” through which expresses himself, as he told reporters at a press conference before 2021’s Turkish Grand Prix. The Mercedes-AMG star has been the face of a very pink campaign for Italian luxury fashion house Valentino, launched his own collections with Tommy Hilfiger, and, most recently, helped design a complex and ultra-exclusive timepiece with storied Swiss watchmaker IWC Schaffhausen: the Portugieser Tourbillon Rétrograde Chronograph Lewis Hamilton.