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Why has Rolex launched its latest Padellone watch in Milan?

The Swiss brand chose to unveil its latest creation, named after a frying pan, in the Italian city which is fast becoming a destination for the watch world

Milan’s Palazzo Serbelloni has seen its fair share of history since it was built in the late 18th century. In 1796, Napoleon lived there for a few weeks; in 1943, bombing destroyed its famous library. And today, its frescoed halls have hosted the launch of a timepiece named after a kitchen utensil: arguably the most important and certainly the least expected watch made by Rolex this year.

That the Swiss watch brand has chosen Milan, a city better known for handbags than hairsprings, to unveil the Padellone to retailers and media is remarkable. Especially given that Patek Philippe has also decided to open its Grand Exhibition next month in the city of the Sforzas.

Nor is it just Rolex and Patek Philippe that have made themselves at home in Milan. LVMH held its watch week in Milan at the beginning of the year and Jaeger-LeCoultre staged an exhibition in the spring.

“We chose Milano because the name of the watch is Padellone, which was invented by Italian collectors,” explains Jean-Frédéric Dufour, Rolex chief executive, of the latest timepiece which goes on sale in November. “Historically, the connection between Rolex and Italy is very strong. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, if a watch succeeded in Italy, it succeeded worldwide.”

The Padellone (ranging from £49,150 to £60,700) is a love letter to a different, older kind of Rolex, which predates the hegemony of the Oyster-cased Professional range. The Submariner launched in 1953 just as the Padellone was discontinued. The Padellone (the Italian word for a large frying pan) was the nickname Italian vintage watch dealers gave to the Ref 8171, a triple calendar moonphase watch Rolex made only briefly in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

It looks nothing like a frying pan, but the name stuck and has become today’s official, trademarked name. Italy has a rich collecting tradition and Italian dealer slang has now become watch-world shorthand, including “Padellone”, “Cioccolatone” and “Ovettone”.

The new Padellone has a 39mm case in 18-carat Everose gold (a gold alloy mixed with copper to give a unique colour and resistance) or 950 platinum. It joins the 1908 model, which was launched in 2023, as the second member of the Perpetual collection. These are Rolexes designed for people who aren’t drawn to the steel sports watch look often associated with the brand.

Its dial is a masterclass in restrained elegance: day and month positioned at 12 o’clock; a slim blue hand tipped with a crescent moon moves around a peripheral date ring; and at 6 o’clock a blue enamelled moonphase disc, its full and new moons cut from meteorite (Rolex uses meteorite on some of its rarer watches and here it is a poetic nod to the celestial nature of this complication). Each moon is decorated with a whimsical human face, a subtle paraphrase of the original 1940s dial from the Ref 8171.

What makes it genuinely new, rather than just a handsome tribute model, is the use of a new calibre 7190, an evolution of the 7135 launched last year. Two additional components, added to the date mechanism and known as the ‘Haplos system’, turn a calendar wristwatch into an annual calendar able to tell the difference between 30-day and 31-day months, requiring human intervention just once a year, at the end of February. Perhaps Rolex’s most nostalgic launch is simultaneously one of its most technically advanced.

Weeks after the Rolex launch, Patek Philippe will bring its Watch Art Grand Exhibition to Milan on October 2. This biennial celebration of high-end watchmaking has previously been held in London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo. But Patek’s choice of Milan this year for the largest such exhibition it has staged may be the greatest endorsement yet of the city’s emerging dominance in fine-watch trading.

Rolex and Patek Philippe have realised that Milan sells — and not just to the Milanese. The city’s flat tax on new residents’ foreign income has become the single most cited explanation for the city’s transformed character and influx of wealthy new residents from abroad. Although it has risen from €100,000 to €300,000, it remains value for money for the genuinely wealthy. In contrast, the UK’s decision to change its non-domiciled rules is cited as another factor in London’s diminished appeal.

“London has lost its stature because of the end of VAT-free shopping and the aggressive competition from other cities, Milan among them,” says Jean Arnault, head of LVMH’s watch division.

Jérôme Lambert, Jaeger-LeCoultre chief executive, says that for two years his brand has staged an annual design exhibition in Milan during the Salone del Mobile furniture and design fair. This year it showcased designer Marc Newson’s work for the brand. “When we do the exhibition, we see 15,000 to 20,000 visitors in one week,” Lambert says. “For a city like Milan, that’s quite remarkable.”

He describes the city as “a kind of lighthouse for style — a reference point for understanding taste before it manifests elsewhere”. His figures bear him out; Jaeger’s business in Milan is “roughly 50 per cent more important” than pre-Covid, he says. He credits not only tourism but the seasonal influx from fashion and design weeks. He says there is “a new dynamism” in the city.

Arnault adds that “Italian men have been pioneering style and fashion for centuries long before sprezzatura was a thing”.

Arnault is impressed by the sophistication of the city’s collector community. “They go far beyond reflexive enthusiasm. They know when a lug has been redesigned, they’ll tell you if a dial’s font is wrong or numerals should be squarer. Only Singapore matches that level of scrutiny.”

The “Milan effect” extends beyond new watches. “We’re getting a lot of ‘virgins’,” says Max Bernardini, a dealer in vintage watches and homewares for more than 40 years. “People who have never bought a vintage watch and customers we never had before — Armenians, French, Londoners, people relocating from abroad.”

Milan hosts its own watch biennial Milano Watch Week, now in its second edition, this year coinciding with the Patek show. The MWW has also announced a partnership with Dubai Watch Week.

Arnault appreciates Milan’s refusal to hide wealth. “It creates a market more like Dubai but far more chic. I find it refreshing,” he says.

Khosla Ventures, Blackstone and Marc Benioff are among the investors putting $200 million into the startup

Factory, which makes autonomous AI agents that code, has raised $200 million at a $5 billion valuation, the company said—more than three times its valuation from five months ago, when it last raised funding. Khosla Ventures, Blackstone and Sequoia Capital are among the investors participating in the round. Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff and hedge-fund manager Brad Gerstner are among the angel investors in the round.

The startup competes with the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX, all of which now have AI-assisted coding tool products.

The context

This corner of the artificial-intelligence industry is highly competitive and dynamic. In August, Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, an AI coding startup. Founded in 2022, Cursor is built as a model-agnostic product, allowing users to toggle between models from many different AI labs.

Weeks after the acquisition closed, OpenAI announced it would be ending its contract with Cursor as soon as November, blocking Cursor users from accessing OpenAI’s models. OpenAI said in a press release it was because it didn’t trust Musk’s companies wouldn’t violate “our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.”

“If you’re an enterprise customer in pharma or automotive, you want a partner who can be there with you for the long term,” said Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory. “You don’t want to be subject to the whims of mercurial leadership where there’s all these feuds.”

The details

Factory’s agents—called Droids—are also model-agnostic. But what separates Factory from other AI coding tools is it is creating an AI-agent developer for enterprises, rather than an AI-assisted tool that enhances the work of individual human engineers.

Grinberg said Factory is committed to maintaining independence from AI labs to be able to provide access to every model for users.

Grinberg started the year with 30 employees. By year’s end, Factory will have 300 employees. To hire, Grinberg said he looks for polymaths, rather than employees who are experts in one field. “We have people who are obsessed with random things like etymology or the history of jazz music,” he said. “In this era, to make progress, you can’t have people who are too niche.”

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Grinberg acknowledged that products built by one startup one day can likely be replicated by a competitor the next day. “So our biggest moat is our culture,” he said.

Federal regulators have opened a probe into whether the steering wheel-free vehicle conflicts with safety standards

Federal regulars are pressing Tesla TSLA -0.43%decrease; red down pointing triangle on whether its steering wheel-free Cybercab may have a way for humans to drive it after all.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked Tesla in an order published Tuesday whether the vehicle has the ability to be driven with traditional controls and, if so, whether that is why Tesla believes the Cybercab is compliant with federal safety standards.

“State whether temporarily installed human driver controls or other equipment for use by a human driver were a part of Tesla’s basis for certifying compliance,” NHTSA said in the order.

Cybercab is a two-seater robotaxi without pedals, mirrors or a steering wheel. Tesla began offering paid rides this month for customers in the vehicle as part of its fleet of robotaxis operating in Austin, Texas. Tesla said its design meets all applicable rules for vehicles operating on public roads.

An automaker has never sold a car without a steering wheel or pedals. Tesla has said it plans to eventually sell the Cybercab to the public.

The unique design of the Cybercab potentially puts it in conflict with safety standards, according to NHTSA, which launched an investigation into the vehicle earlier this month. In the order, NHTSA asked Tesla to confirm if it can “temporarily” install manual driving controls to operate the Cybercab, and if that’s why it determined the vehicle is in compliance.

Tesla sees the Cybercab as a linchpin to its effort to transition from making traditional electric vehicles to fully autonomous cars. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said he wants the company to dominate the autonomous vehicle arena with its Full Self-Driving software, which underpins Cybercab’s operations. The company’s ride-hailing service is racing against rivals like Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon.com’s Zoox to develop driverless taxi services.

NHTSA is in the process of overhauling safety standards to accommodate driverless vehicles, but those changes aren’t yet in place. If NHTSA determines the Cybercab isn’t compliant with federal safety standards, the agency could order a recall to address any issues. Refusing such an order could expose Tesla to fines.

In the run-up to the Cybercab’s public launch, the company showed off prototypes at public events that had visible steering wheels attached to the car, people familiar with the events say. Tesla has said that some Cybercabs can be equipped with steering wheels, in documents posted on its website about the vehicle.

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment.

In a guide for first responders, Tesla said the Cybercab “typically” isn’t equipped with a steering wheel, but that some versions might have one.

“To facilitate testing and validation of safety systems, a number of Cybercabs are equipped with hardware for manual operation, such as a steering wheel and pedals for acceleration and braking,” Tesla said in the guide.

Tesla has considered novel ways before to design a driverless vehicle to federal safety standards. The company previously weighed the possibility of making a fully autonomous car with a steering wheel and pedals that could be stowed when they’re not in use.

Experts say that Tesla could engineer a detachable steering wheel kit because the Cybercab was designed with a steer and brake “by wire” system, which uses an all-electronic design instead of mechanical components.

Paul Snyder, who is chair of the College for Creative Studies’ transportation design program, said a temporary driver kit would require a “unique or heavily modified instrument panel on the driver side,” Snyder said.

“A lot depends on if they planned for it when it was originally engineered,” he said.

No fewer than 300 VIPs crowded around the tables at The Pool, the vast restaurant occupying the ground floor of New York's Seagram Building, on 10 September 2026 for the Kering Foundation's annual gala. In addition to Chairman François-Henri Pinault, CEO Luca de Meo and the former head of Kering Americas, Laurent Claquin, several brand heads had reserved tables to take part in the auction.

That was notably the case for Saint Laurent's chief executive, Cédric Charbit, who is showing an increasingly marked interest in managing the wide circle of "people" (celebrities) who orbit Kering's crown jewel, a prerogative traditionally reserved for the houses' artistic directors. His activism on this front is helped by the recent promotion of one of his close allies, former Balenciaga VIP chief Johan Fleury, to the post of group celebrity coordinator.

On the sidelines of the foundation's auction, and then of the Paris Hilton DJ set that closed the evening, the future of Saint Laurent was at the centre of guests' private conversations. Since Glitz revealed the tensions that have built up between Cédric Charbit and artistic director Anthony Vaccarello, our reporting has been widely picked up, notably by Puck as well as by numerous blogs and Instagram accounts. This media buzz contrasts with the situation inside the house: although the ten-year contract binding Anthony Vaccarello to Saint Laurent expires in less than a year, neither Kering's legal department nor Saint Laurent's has taken the slightest step to notify him of its termination or its renewal. To date, the artistic director is busy finalising the looks he will present on 29 September at the Spring 2027 Fashion Week.

The persistence of this hiatus and the growing uncertainty over what comes next are starting to worry the group's executives, who are anxious not to relive the experience of Alessandro Michele's departure from Gucci, which left Kering without a plan B in autumn 2022. Yet without an agreement with Anthony Vaccarello, there is nothing to be done beyond making vague promises and signing non-disclosure agreements with available designers such as Chemena Kamali (see edition of 30/07/26) or Dario Vitale, ousted from Versace by the Prada family. And the longer this drags on, the more likely investors and financial analysts are to demand answers from the group's management, which is due to report third-quarter results on 22 October and whose share price has been sliding steadily since the start of the month.

In an attempt to regain the initiative in a situation that is spiralling, Saint Laurent's management has for the past few days been circulating a fairy-tale scenario: the return of Hedi Slimane to the house he made famous over seven years, first as artistic director of YSL Homme (1997-2000), then as creative director of the entire house (2012-2016). Cédric Charbit was head of Saint Laurent products during the designer's final years and has always been open about his admiration for him.

But that "devotion" is not necessarily shared by Kering's controlling family or by the group's CEO, which makes the bombshell of a Slimane return to Saint Laurent highly improbable. In the meantime, a certain nervousness is spreading through the upper floors of Kering's headquarters on rue de Sèvres (Paris 7th arrondissement), where there is concern about having to get through another two weeks without being able to make any announcement at all.

Early indicators point to extreme weather, with the Pacific Rim already hit and more likely in store for the U.S.

This year’s El Niño is heating up to be one of the strongest on record.

The global weather disrupter has already stoked wildfires in Asia, hurricanes in the Pacific and fishery closures in South America.

The worst may be yet to come. The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, recently forecast that a very strong El Niño will persist through winter, warning of flooding, drought and extreme heat.

Here’s what to know:

This global weather phenomenon occurs every few years and lasts about a year. Typically, warm water collects in the western Pacific. But in El Niño years, this mass of warm water shifts east toward South America.

This eastward movement of warmer water is one of the harbingers of El Niño. Scientists measure these ocean temperature changes to predict how strong an event will be.

This summer’s temperatures in the east-central Pacific are among the highest on record, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Projections show them exceeding previously powerful El Niños.

As warm waters shift east in the Pacific, the tropical rains they generate move with them—creating fertile conditions for hurricanes. The number of named storms in the northeastern Pacific is about 40% above average for this time of year, according to data from Colorado State University.

Hawaii has seen unusually strong cyclone activity this summer, with Hurricanes Lala and Lowell bringing destructive winds and flooding.

Strong El Niños in 1997 and 2015 fueled devastating blazes in Indonesia. This year more than a half-million acres have burned there, forcing school closures and harming air quality as far away as Singapore and the Philippines.

El Niño’s effects extend far beyond the Pacific.

As ocean evaporation shifts east, it generates warm air that rises into the atmosphere. The warm air migrates north and east, speeding up as it goes.

These high-pressure winds feed into the subtropical jet stream, giving an extra boost that propels it further east over North America, causing it to blow stronger and steadier.

The souped-up jet stream delivers more rain and storms to the southern part of the U.S. Precipitation peaks in winter, potentially bringing flooding and coastal erosion to California and severe thunderstorms to Gulf states.

El Niño sows chaos even farther afield.

“Southern Africa has a pretty strong tendency for drought during El Niño,” according to Emily Becker, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami. “These can have very significant impacts because of food insecurity.”

The U.N. World Food Program recently estimated that El Niño could push almost 50 million more people into acute hunger by next year, with southern Africa and Central America particularly at risk.

El Niño isn’t all bad.

While the climate disturbance promotes cyclones in the Pacific, it can stifle them in the North Atlantic.

In El Niño years, warm air rising off the Pacific generates high-altitude winds that blow east toward the tropical Atlantic. “This results in increased levels of Atlantic vertical wind shear,” according to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University. “Too much vertical wind shear tears apart hurricanes.”

The North Atlantic typically gets more than three hurricanes by this time of year. So far, there have been none.

Another redeeming aspect of El Niño: Scientists know where it is likely to strike.

“Disasters happen all the time. And in El Niño years, we actually know where they will happen,” said Becker. “We can prepare.”

Denmark says one of the flares passed the aircraft at close range, branding the action as ‘reckless’

A Russian warship fired flares at a Danish helicopter over the Baltic Sea in the latest sign of what Denmark’s government called increasingly risky and reckless behaviour from Moscow.

Denmark called in Russia’s ambassador after a Russian frigate in international waters fired two flares at a Danish helicopter that was taking “routine” photographs of it. Danish military said one of the flares passed the helicopter at close range.

“Reckless action from Russia towards Danish military during a routine overflight yesterday. Russian actions are meant to intimidate and divide. They will not succeed. We will not waver,” said Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

Jeppe Bruus, Denmark’s defence minister, said: “This is the first time we have seen an incident of this kind to the best of my knowledge, and it demonstrates that the Russians are becoming more willing to take risks. It is therefore a serious incident, and that is also why we are summoning the Russian ambassador for a meeting.”

Russia’s ambassador to Denmark said the helicopter behaved in a provocative manner and that Russian attempts to de-escalate the situation in the Baltic Sea had been rebuffed by Copenhagen.

European governments, particularly along Nato’s eastern flank, have warned in recent weeks that Russia is becoming more confrontational in an attempt to dissuade countries from supporting Ukraine. Russia is also stepping up hybrid attacks, including provocations, arson and the weaponisation of migration into the EU, they added.

Denmark has been one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine. Last year, the Scandinavian country closed multiple airports after unconfirmed sightings of drones, with suspicion falling on Russia.

The Danish incident came after Nato fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania for the first time.

Lithuanian authorities said it was not yet clear whether the drone — which came from Belarus — was Russian or Ukrainian, but that it appeared to be carrying explosives. It was shot down west of the capital Vilnius, and investigators were examining the wreckage.

Similar incidents have taken place in neighbouring Poland, Latvia and Estonia. Many have involved stray Ukrainian drones, which Baltic officials believe were forced off course by Russian jamming, but some have been Russian unmanned devices.

Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte this week said that Russia was becoming “increasingly reckless” after a drone attack at Leipzig airport was attributed by German officials to Moscow.