The Rolex Oyster That Changed Everything

​The waters of the English Channel were unforgiving in 1927, yet Mercedes Gleitze pressed on, determined to prove herself. Around her neck hung an early Rolex Oyster, a watch designed to withstand what pocket watches could not. 

Mercedes Gleitze's achievement marked the first time an athlete's triumph was leveraged to validate a product's technical innovation. Video courtesy of Sotheby's.

For more than ten hours, it endured the salt, the cold, and the relentless swell, keeping perfect time. When Gleitze emerged, the watch had done more than accompany her—it had announced itself as a new kind of wristwatch, one built for the modern age.

Mercedes Gleitze, the very first Rolex "testimonee." Photo courtesy of Sotheby's.

Hans Wilsdorf, Rolex's founder, had been waiting for this. Gleitze was not only a swimmer, she was proof incarnate. Her "Vindication Swim" became a spectacle: boats trailed her in the water, musicians played to keep her spirits alive, and journalists scribbled notes while planes circled overhead to capture the scene. What they were witnessing was more than endurance sport; it was marketing genius unfolding in real time. When the Daily Mail published Rolex's full-page ad declaring the Oyster "the watch that defied the Channel," Wilsdorf had written the first great chapter of modern brand storytelling.

"The Oyster was instrumental in the transition from pocket to wristwatches and the Mercedes Gleitze watch played an important role in this transition, rendering it one of the most significant wristwatches still in private hands." – Sam Hines, Sotheby's Global Chairman, Watches.

​From that day forward, the rules of watchmaking changed. Craft alone was no longer enough—watches needed narratives, ambassadors, proof forged in the extremes of human achievement. The Oyster became not just a waterproof wristwatch but a symbol of possibility, and Gleitze, unknowingly, the first in a long line of brand "testimonees." The alliance between athlete and object, between press and product, ushered in an entirely new era of marketing—one that every watch brand has followed, in one way or another, ever since.

For watch fans and historians, a truly magnificent engraving.

​Now, nearly a century later, as Sotheby's prepares to auction Gleitze's Rolex Oyster in Geneva this November with an estimate exceeding CHF 1 million, the watch surfaces once again as both artifact and myth. It is the watch that proved itself in the Channel, the watch that crowned Rolex a cultural force, and the watch that rewrote the script for an industry still living in the story it set into motion.

The beginnings of ingenious marketing tied to sports sponsorships. Photo courtesy of Sotheby's.

The Mercedes Gleitze Rolex Oyster—the world's first practical waterproof wristwatch and one of the most significant timepieces in history—defined Rolex as we know it today. This legendary watch will make its first appearance in 25 years at Sotheby's Important Watches Live Sale in Geneva on November 9, 2025, with an estimate exceeding CHF 1 million / USD 1.3 million.