After the madcap success of The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie is back with his take on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Starring Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, the movie—streaming now on Amazon Prime—is a wild and mostly true story set around a ragtag group of spies heading deep into Nazi territory during the grimmest engagements of World War II, hiding in plain sight aboard a Swedish fishing trawler.
Henry Cavill does Henry Cavill things as the lead, Gus March-Phillipps (alleged to be one of the early inspirations for Ian Fleming’s James Bond), alongside Ritchson (a.k.a. Jack Reacher), who plays the biggest man you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s a heady, wise-cracking, globe-trotting spy story that also features some great, era-accurate watches.
Loulou Bontemps, Ritchie's favourite costume designer who was responsible for the stellar watches in The Gentlemen, spent a long time researching the period Ungentlemanly is set in to ensure both the outfits and accompanying watches were up to scratch, and she drew particular inspiration from the ‘Dirty Dozen’—a series of 12 Swiss field watches commissioned by the MoD to aid soldiers during WW2. The brief was that the watches needed to be reliable, durable and discreet, with black dials, Arabic numerals and luminous hour markets.
For Cavill’s character, Bontemps settled on two different, vintage iterations of the Dirty Dozen, one by Jaeger-LeCoultre (renowned for its iconic Reverso model) and one by lesser-known brand, Cyma. “Henry is someone with very clear and particular taste,” Bontemps tells us. “He likes to collaborate with the wardrobe process, which is great for me. With Henry being the leader in the film, it was important that he had this powerful watch, so I presented him with a lot of different options. And of course, he chose the most classic and expensive original [the JLC piece]! He just has that kind of great taste, and he really felt it was fitting for his character.”
Look closely and you'll see Cavill wears the Cyma field watch in the film as well. Bontemps bought these two pieces from Specialist Watches and the rest of the watches in the film were sourced from Alfie’s Antiques and other antique stores and collectors.
Along with JLC and Cyma, the other Swiss brands involved in the Dirty Dozen scheme were Buren, Eterna, Grana, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record, Timor, and Vertex (whose heritage actually lies in Britain). Prior to the Dirty Dozen, soldiers would wear civilian watches, so it was a landmark in terms of tool watchmaking and the overall design aesthetic that remains with military watches.
As well as looking after the knitwear and military garb for Ritchie's projects, Bontemps also styled Cavill for The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare red carpet, with a couple of grail JLC watches making their way onto the ex-Superman actor's wrist.
“We both wanted to reference the Dirty Dozen theme during the press tour, too,” says Bontemps. “I reached out to Jaeger-LeCoultre, and they were really open to it. We wanted to make an homage to his character. We went into their store on Bond Street, had a little meeting, and Henry chose two of his preferred watches, the Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon was for day-to-day, while the Duometre Quantieme Lunaire [a showstopper and one of JLC's most complicated watches] was for the red carpet and other events.
“It’s just a little detail,” she adds, “but I love those kind of details, and so does Henry. It felt right to bring it back round to those iconic watches that the real-life characters used.”
This story originally appeared on British GQ with the title 'Henry Cavill's iconic military watches are the real star of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare'