Inside the Rebirth of a Legendary 250-Year-Old Watch Brand

Last Thursday night, inside a hangar at the Santa Monica airport, royalty dined with the common folk. The vast space had been reimagined as the world’s sexiest and most expansive jazz club, with starry guests on hand for dinner including Rashida Jones, SNL’s Ego Nwodim, and the reality star (and famous brother) Dylan Efron. They were all present to celebrate the latest chapter of Urban Jürgensen, the iconic 252-year-old Danish watchmaker.

None of the folks I mentioned, however, were the real stars at the UJ event. Instead, it was industry insiders like the revered watchmaker Rexhep Rexhepi who received the most attention—even Milwaukee Bucks swingman Kyle Kuzma approached Rexhepi to pay his respects. Given that Urban Jürgensen’s new owner, Andrew Rosenfield, is a longtime patron of lesser-known, technically proficient brands, it’s only fitting the night would become an evening of worship for independent watchmaking.

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Last week, Urban Jürgensen debuted three new watches to officially launch its latest era. Since its founding by Jürgen Jürgensen in 1773, the brand has followed a longer, twistier path than Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road. It’s best to think of the historic brand as an anthology series: Although its watches have remained in constant production over the centuries, the brand has undergone multiple changes in ownership, which have yielded dramatically different results. For much of the 20th century, in fact, UJ was lost in the wilderness, until an acquisition in the 1980s led to a brief golden era.

Those days were long over by the time the Rosenfield family “heard a rumor through friends that [UJ] were in a little bit of financial trouble,” says Andrew’s son Alex, who now serves as the brand’s CEO. Andrew led a consortium to acquire Urban Jürgensen in 2021, and the brand has been readying a relaunch ever since. Which begs the question: How do you add an exciting new chapter to a centuries-old independent brand’s story without losing the plot?

Installing one of the world’s greatest living watchmakers at the top was the foremost priority. “The first real thing we did involving the company was to ask Kari [Voutilainen] if he would be involved,” Alex told me. The soft-spoken Finnish watchmaker heads up his own eponymous brand and is known for his immaculate hand finishing. (To wit: Voutilainen said in an interview, “I can’t do things that are half done,” he said. “If you finish something, it should be finished correctly.” We can tell.)

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