Previously: Men about to get murdered in Patek Philippe ads.
If you have ever leafed through an issue of The Economist or any other glossy magazine meant for the upwardly mobile as they wait in first-class airport lounges, you have seen a Patek Philippe ad: a blond father and son, usually on a boat, are laughing sternly at the sea, while the tagline reminds you that “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.”
And yet the first generation is so rarely prepared to hand over its prize. A Patek Philippe is not relinquished that easily. A Patek Philippe is a $60,000 watch, for in case you need to know what time it is while you’re spending $60,000.
The hyper-wealthy do not look after their children; each generation of the transcendentally rich is convinced it will be the first to discover the secrets of immortality that render childbearing and childrearing irrelevant. How can the passage of time apply to money? How could a jam-smeared child take your beautiful watch, your beautiful youth, your beautiful place?
“Mommy, can I sit at your makeup chair and try things on?”
“All right, little one. Just this once.”
“Mommy, can I try on your earrings? They’re so beautiful.”
“If you’re very careful, yes. Someday I’ll buy you a pair of your own.”
“Mommy, can I try on your Patek Philippe?”
“If you think you can pry it from my wrist while there is still breath in my body, girl.”
“You two look like sisters,” he said.
“Well, we aren’t,” she told him. “We aren’t sisters.”
They couldn’t stop laughing. How funny. What a funny mistake. Her mother wouldn’t let go of her hand. She could feel the burning points of her mother’s fingers on her wrist. No one had told a joke.
“How funny that everything ends up in your hands, sooner or later,” her mother had said, still laughing. “That ring. That watch. The power. How funny that everything that used to be in my hands is sitting fat and pretty in yours.”
As soon as he was out of earshot, she drifted coolly over to the girl and wrapped a protective arm around her. She smiled, as if she were there to help.
“What are you working on there?” she asked.
“Spelling,” said the girl.
“How nice,” she said. “Can you read this?”
She picked up the pen and scrawled out a quick message before walking over to him.
I WILL ALWAYS BE STRONGER THAN YOU.
The girl knew how to spell that.
The girl had waited a long time to grow up. She had grown too big for pity, too big for remorse. She was just big enough for the watch, and the watch was just big enough for her. She would outlast everyone at the table. The watch had all the time in the world, and so did she.
“There was never anyone else on the boat with me, darling,” she said lightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mother’s been out of town for weeks.”
“I love you, Mother,” the girl said, wrapping her arms around her.
“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said.
“I’m going to grow up and take everything you have,” the girl said.
She laughed, a little. “You’ll have your own things, when you grow up, darling. You won’t have to have my things.”
“No,” the girl said, with a charming little jut to her chin, “I’ll want to have your things.”
“Sweetheart,” her mother said, “you’re hurting me a little. Don’t hug me so tight.”
“I’ll hurt you a little at first,” the girl said, “and then I’ll hurt you a lot.”
Keep her facing you. Don’t ever let her step out of your line of sight. Facing her, you’ll always be safe. Never let her get behind you, and never lose sight of where her hands are. Hands in front. Eyes forward. Keep watching her.
Do you like the watch, you little lace-encrusted monster? Looking at it is the only thing you’ll ever get to do. Eat your heart out, my darling. I’ll throw it into the sea before I wrap it around your undeserving wrist.
Tags: ads, design, murder, patek philippe, upper-class bloodbaths
i’m the first comment and i’m overwhelmed
so i’ll just say
i feel i finally emotionally understand why everyone always says
malloryyyyyyyyy
😦
Jesus CHRIST, Mallory.
I WILL ALWAYS BE STRONGER THAN YOU.
Bad Seed-level fuckery right there
Now to hide in bed, whimpering softly, until someone comes home to rescue me.
The girl will get home first, and, finding her mother whimpering under the duvet like a wounded animal, she makes her move.
“I’ll hurt you a little at first,” the girl said, “and then I’ll hurt you a lot.”
I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be. Remember, Mother? I do.
I have that quote in digital limbo with Ctrl-C but you beat me to it. God it’s so good.
i also copied that, ready to paste it. shivers!
“Remember, Mother?” is reverberating around my head in Natalie Woods’ voice.
I guess when you can sell things above average annual salaries you don’t feel the need to hire somebody with any feel for language to word your slogans
It is a little known fact that the upper-upper class do not give a shit about taste or beauty. That is almost completely an upper-middle class thing. At best the upper-uppers will fund taste and beauty for kicks, but they rely on upper-middles to make and define it for them.
Oooh, like Donald Trump’s propensity for in-home decor that is just marble and gold leaf barfed all over everything. Plus, you know, the hair.
You can see this in Britain. The oiks don’t give a shit. The old money also don’t care. Worrying about what people think of you is for the middle class.
Exactly. My personal favorite is that there are websites FULL of very, very expensive, very, very comfortable, very, very FRUMPY clothes.
Yes, ma’am, I realize those aren’t technically your pajamas. But if you take the shoes and scarf off, we both know you’d happily pass out in them and never notice.
They make a Patek Philippe with one of those James Bond garotte wires, don’t they?
I’m pretty sure they do.
For $60,000 that little fucker should automatically jump off your wrist and do the garroting for you.
It should also hide the body so you can maintain plausible deniability.
If I thought I could carry it off appropriately, I’d make a recording of myself reading this in a voice rich and throaty, with a subtle edge of malice.
I support this idea. Even better, “A Beautiful Woman Reads…”, which is to say, Mallory could do it.
I read it in my head using the voice of Tim Curry, and it was marvelous
And when the lace-encrusted monster eventually executes her evil plan, she finds to her horror that the watch is a knockoff. Ultimate Mother Trolling from Beyond the Grave.
Guy De Maupassant Stories Made Horrific
Like the knockoff Movado from China that one of my husband’s coworkers gave him to give to me. I”m in on it, I know it’s a knockoff, but jewelers can barely tell.
Long cons are great.
Mwahahahaha.
My mom is bringing me lunch today 🙁
:(((((
Have you already taken the Watch, or is it still in her possession? We need details if we’re going to help you come up with a survival plan.
She still has the Watch. I placated her with fleece leggings and snowpants. It’s a temporary solution, at best.
use a friend as a food taster
The bookkeeper arrived in the nick of time
Get your food taster down there, stat.
Now that I have this watch, for the first time I am truly and deeply happy my uterus is defective and I cannot have children. Wretched, measles-prone things, children. This elegant timepiece will endure.
You are doomed, as your mother’s cold anger at ending the line is waiting for the right moment to execute her judgement.
… You know, it would be nice to make more money, but then you’d have to be a rich person. Which seems like it sucks, honestly.
#4 is teeth teeth all the teeth maybe there is a watch but you dare not look away and we are nothing but teeth
so many points to whoever edits the women out of the picture leaving only their teeth and the Icon
Here you go. Feel free to join me in my nightmares:
yesss can this be thetoast’s icon now
Yes! I want a t-shirt. I wear all black all the time anyway.
Attack the Block, anyone?
I imagine if I were one of these women and my personal beauty was constantly being defined by and conflated with the beauty of an inanimate object, I might be a little ragey under the surface as well.
I always realize I’m not quite in the right income bracket to read The Economist, and now I realize I’m not devious enough either.
Now I’ll never see any of the Economist ads as innocent. Hey there, beautiful Singapore Airlines flight attendant, I know you’re going to try to poison me while I’m sleeping in my full flat-bed business class seat.
I find Monocle inspires far more class warfare rage in me than The Economist.
The Economist magazine is a shop window, and the product being displayed is analyses of global events and their impact on, of course, global economics. Do you need to know whether it’s a good idea to invest in Argentina or China? Whether Canada or Low Earth Orbit will be the new frontier in fifty years time?
If not, then you’re not the intended audience.
I gave all of my jewelry to my daughter after she turned 18 and I think I’m safe for now
Of course, now she may murder you simply out of pique.
Careful… she probably thinks you’ve got more jewelry, better than what she has now.
#2 is holding her daughter’s left ring finger firmly, the curse salve sticky on her fingers. If men can never see that she’s single, she’ll never marry, and then her mother can reclaim the watch when she dies. No inconvenient granddaughter will steal what was once rightfully hers.
The henbane hits her daughter’s central nervous system, and she starts to laugh convulsively. Her mother laughs too.
I’m pregnant and suddenly feeling very possessive of my $28 watch.
Good. There are those who would assume that the marque of Timex is too modest to plant the seed of avarice in a tender babe. Those people are fools who deserve their fate.
“Something truly precious holds its beauty forever.”
UNLIKE WOMEN
UNLIKE CHILDREN
Yeah, it sure would be great if these damn women weren’t aggressively rotting inside our beautiful watchbands…
Now I’ve imagined them building an army of androids, perfect, metal, indestructible.
I’m going to call my autobiography “Rotting in Watchbands”.
Spoken like someone who can’t afford enough human blood to bathe in.
Is it wrong that I hope the lives of the hyperwealthy are ACTUALLY LIKE THIS? Full of pointless watches and demon children and the certainty that no amount of money wards off decay forever?
It has yet to be proven to me that the lives of the hyperwealthy are NOT like this. So I will continue to assume this is all TRUE FACTS.
Yes! Now that I think about it, everything I’ve ever heard about the backstabbing and infighting of the hyperwealthy agrees with you.
The truest fact is probably the one about the teeth. D:
seems fine
I…these posts aren’t Serious Journalism? I’m pretty sure they’re Serious Journalism.
I think you’re right! It’s just that Mallory’s version of Serious goes to…dark, dark places. Not a surprise. She has told us about her reading taste in non-fiction.
I mean, somebody has to expose the seamy underbelly of the 1%.
Also, Eat the Rich.
I would binge-watch some sort of Patek Philippe telenovela.
Let’s do this, people. I need this in my life. Preferably subtly reality-style, no interviews.
Wearable technology.
Wearable idolatry.
Girl you know you’re right. In one.
i said it once in the “rich people curses” post and i’ll say it again here: “patek” really does sound like some weird onomatopoeia for a splatty horse poop.
which makes the steely-eyed “this little brat will never get her jam hands on my patek” tone all the more delightful, in my opinion.
The woman on the boat has a really excellent murderin’ face.
I have my mother’s watch but she resolutely refuses to give me any of her jewellery…. must work harder..
Remember that Google will always remember if you search for “untraceable poisons” or “disposing of a body”.
Use DuckDuckGo.
I read Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial recently, and if we changed “mother” to “grandmother,” literally any of these scenes would fit seamlessly into the book.
WOOOO THE SUNDIAL yes yes a thousand times yes.
All of these ads feature only children. The thing is, my mother’s death is inevitable and statistically likely to precede my own. My sister, though….
This is scarily relevant. (And interesting!)
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/11/luxury_bra…
“Most products have quick, easy, memorable taglines, because most people are idiots. However, Patek Philippe’s tag line is complicated and unmemorizable:
You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation.
Which is the kind of tagline a person who wants to be a wealthy, complicated, precise man who doesn’t fall for tag lines would fall for. The man in the photo is not a representation of the target demo; he is the impossible aspiration of the target demo. That explains how the kid can be in a sweater vest and not trying to murder his family.”
I would repeat my favourite line here, like a YouTube commenter or an echoing cave, but I would have to elevate some part of this article above the rest. So, I’ll just thank you for it.
When I saw that this was a sequel to “Who’s Getting Murdered…”, I knew it was now a good day.
“Something truly precious holds its beauty forever.” That was the dream she was buying with the watch, but every moment with her daughter speaks against it. It seems like no time since she was a wailing infant, but she has metastasized week on week, a constant reminder that children become adults and adults become elderly and then die. Every time someone says “Hasn’t she grown?” it reminds her of the shadow stalking everyone, reaching toward her with a skeletal hand. But not for her. Surely not her.
“Mommy,” says the child, bearing a gift. “For you.”
“Darling Mummy” chided the girl. “You know we’d never put you in a home.” They laughed at the tension in the air.
BRB, sending this to my daughter.
True story: My daughter once looked up at me lovingly and said, “When I grow up I want to be just like you.”
Me: “Aww, you do?”
Her: “Yes, I’m going to have your earrings and your boobies. I will have all of your things.”
Me: *backs away slowly*
Holy crap, suddenly I remember feeling EXACTLY THAT WAY.
Relevant: now she is planning to get rid of all her jewelry, and as her only daughter I’m suddenly like a dragon on my mountain of gold. MY DAY HAS COME. The sick thing is that I am aggressively unmaterialistic and rarely wear jewelry. She’s willed everything away from her children, for the time being, and I don’t care a bit about that. Yet I will be very hurt if she donates her ancient, inexpensive ornaments. WOMEN, ya know?
Ugh, last Thanksgiving my grandmother told my sisters and me that she wanted us to come over and pick out the jewelry we wanted left to us in her will, and I swear to god we all flinched away so hard from the mere thought of it that the three of us ended up in the next room. I still refuse to do it, because Grandma is going to live forever la la la I can’t hear you.
I did the same and regret it so much because I avoided it long enough so that it it never happened. Looking back I realize how much it would have meant to her to be able to have those conversations with us about the inevitable in a socially acceptable way (what a scary lonely thing to face by yourself, and never talk about with the ones you love), and see that things that she worked so hard for could be passed onto us and that we’d have something to remember her by.
A woman at the exercise studio I work at was relaying a very similar story recently. Apparently she had a new necklace and her daughter turned to her and said, “Mommy, that is very beautiful. Can I have it when you die?” Dragons and gold indeed.
I never quite considered her death, per se. I just thought, as you do, that when i was grown(say, at 14) she would have gotten tired of making herself beautiful and enjoying life.
Now that I’m 30, and she has in fact grown tired of making herself beautiful, it is far, far worse than any creepy the children can pull on me. Their empty little heads! Delicious. But seeing the life go out of her is a sin and a rage.
Still be pissed if she gives the jewelry to Goodwill. And the scarves. But if I had strings to pull, it would be that she keep them.
The hyper-wealthy do not look after their children; each generation of the transcendentally rich is convinced it will be the first to discover the secrets of immortality that render childbearing and childrearing irrelevant
While I am yet to discover secrets of immortality (and hardly qualify for “hyper” rich), as far as I am concerned, childrearing is already pretty much irrelevant 🙂
Also, on a somewhat related note, Patek Philippe are surprisingly fragile.
Well, I’d hope so. I hope to God nobody who is buying a watch the price of a bachelor’s degree is doing it muttering, “This thing better last for FUCKING EVER.”
I think that some people actually do. I know a few folks who try to “fake it till they make it” and buy preposterously expensive stuff so that they can feign status in hopes of “mingling with” people with “right connections”. Rarely works, IMO (okay, I never actually tried that approach to living, and my observational sample is, like, three dudes, so it’s not the most well-reasoned opinion of mine)
Though, to be honest, in PF defense they replaced the entire thing (repair was not an option, which was rather surprising given that the fall was mild and external damage seemingly manageable. And warranty, even when combined with rather nifty EU customer protections, is just two years IIRC, so they are neither “lasting forever” nor “infinitely respawning” 🙂 )
Hilarious detail: the customer service people thought that the dude who purchased the watch was my husband (while it was a gift, our relationship is strictly a business one. He’s the kind of person who feels uncomfortable about high-paid employees wearing Casio watches and “vanilla-ish” business suits ) and almost sent the replacement to his billing address, which would have likely resulted in whacky hijinx.
I am sorry, I don’t mean to be mean, but… how does it feel to own some preposterously expensive shit like that (even if it’s a gift or whatevs)?
It’s like… I dunno. I’m just curious because I’ve never had that much money, and the best gift a boss has ever given me was a “funny” mug with company logo. So I wonder what a different life feels like.
No offense?
No offense taken.
It doesn’t feel like anything special, really.
Maybe the gift would have more emotional impact – perhaps not a good one at that – if I was unable to afford some silly expensive nonsense like that.
However, I technically can (at the cost of a significant portion of yearly income, yes, but that portion of my income is disposable anyway) and so it’s just a silly gift from a superior who has weird hangups about what high-paid mid-upper management persons should look like.
He probably thinks I have “money issues”, lol 🙂
To be honest, I like my Casio ED hundred-something (a really old model from the 90s that a close friend suggested and which I tracked down on ebay for $75) much, much more.
It’s metal, it’s heavy, it is nearly indestructible (so far, it has survived some major falls and sinking below rated depth threshold, which seemingly did not affect them at all, save for very minor spalling on the crystal), and it is fully digital, with none of that goddamn fancy “hands” business (I kinda despise “proper” watches with hands, even if they cost like a house)
Oh, and it’s rated to run for a decade on a single “tablet” battery (so, if I ever discover the secrets of immortality, with a Casio I’ll also save on batteries, big time!)
So basically that scene from Three Amigos come to fruition.
“Can I have your watch when you are dead?”
I think that some people actually do. I know a few folks who try to "fake it till they make it" and buy preposterously expensive stuff so that they can feign status in hopes of "mingling with" people with "right connections". Rarely works, IMO (okay, I never actually tried that approach to living, and my observational sample is, like, three dudes, so it's not the most well-reasoned opinion of mine)
Though, to be honest, in PF defense they replaced the entire thing (repair was not an option, which was rather surprising given that the fall was mild and external damage seemingly manageable. And warranty, even when combined with rather nifty EU customer protections, is just two years IIRC, so they are neither "lasting forever" nor "infinitely respawning" 🙂 )
Hilarious detail: the customer service people thought that the dude who purchased the watch was my husband (while it was a gift, our relationship is strictly a business one. He's the kind of person who feels uncomfortable about high-paid employees wearing Casio watches and "vanilla-ish" business suits ) and almost sent the replacement to his billing address, which would have likely resulted in whacky hijinx.
No offense taken.
It doesn't feel like anything special, really.
Maybe the gift would have more emotional impact – perhaps not a good one at that – if I was unable to afford some silly expensive nonsense like that.
However, I technically can (at the cost of a significant portion of yearly income, yes, but that portion of my income is disposable anyway) and so it's just a silly gift from a superior who has weird hangups about what high-paid mid-upper management persons should look like.
He probably thinks I have "money issues", lol 🙂
To be honest, I like my Casio ED hundred-something (a really old model from the 90s that a close friend suggested and which I tracked down on ebay for $75) much, much more.
It's metal, it's heavy, it is nearly indestructible (so far, it has survived some major falls and sinking below rated depth threshold, which seemingly did not affect them at all, save for very minor spalling on the crystal), and it is fully digital, with none of that goddamn fancy "hands" business (I kinda despise "proper" watches with hands, even if they cost like a house)
Oh, and it's rated to run for a decade on a single "tablet" battery (so, if I ever discover the secrets of immortality, with a Casio I'll also save on batteries, big time!)
I did the same and regret it so much because I avoided it long enough so that it it never happened. Looking back I realize how much it would have meant to her to be able to have those conversations with us about the inevitable in a socially acceptable way (what a scary lonely thing to face by yourself, and never talk about with the ones you love), and see that things that she worked so hard for could be passed onto us and that we'd have something to remember her by.
A $60,000 watch. We don’t even have a $60,000 car (we didn’t even *look* at $60,000 cars!) and I think we might technically be rich. (Well, “we” – I make almost zero money and we are not married, so the money is legally all his, but then again, I make almost zero money and this is not a problem. Someday, when I have an advanced degree and am working, my paycheck will probably be just enough to cover the cost of childcare. I know this, because I talked to one of my professors, who has two children (I don’t have any yet), about balancing grad school/PhD programs and children, and she told me that pretty much straight up. Her husband’s (lawyer) salary pays for, you know, life, hers just pays for her to be able to work when her kids aren’t in school. (She also told me not to have children.)
It should also hide the body so you can maintain plausible deniability.
I think I love you.