Orlando Bloom is a Porsche guy. A few years back, he was in Stuttgart choosing the custom finishes for his Sonderwunsche—the term for a special request or “factory commission.” He was outfitting the 911 GT3, his fifth Porsche, which qualifies him as one of the company’s biggest super fans.

“It all started with the first paycheck I got from making a movie,” he says. “I was like, ‘Okay, now I can go buy myself a sports car,’ so I got a 911S from 1973, which I still own. It kept going from there; When I finished a film, it was either a watch or a car. So years later, there I was at the factory in Stuttgart, building out my dream car. They said, ‘We really see your passion for the brand and we’d like to talk about working together.’” The 48-year-old actor is now officially global brand ambassador for Porsche Design timepieces and eyewear. “For me it felt really natural and authentic,” he says. “I’m a bit of a geek for the brand, and so it’s kind of like I’m living my boyhood dream. First I started collecting, and now I’m working with the design team at Porsche, and I’m very grateful for it.”

Since then, the star of The Lord of The Rings and Hobbit series, and more than a dozen other films, including Gran Tourismo, has collaborated with Porsche Design on a pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket, both inspired by Porsche car models. He’s especially proud of the jacket: “It’s very beautiful leather. It has a hood because I wanted it to have a slightly street feel to it, and I wanted it to have a utility feel as well, so it’s reversible.”

He’s also a watch guy, a passion instilled in him by his grandfather, who collected Omega and other top brands. When Bloom was a teenager, before he became a movie star, he remembers buying a Timex from a guy who was selling pre-owned watches out of the trunk of his car. Today, his collection is more aspirational. He rhymes off several coveted models from top brands when asked about his collection. And he loves Porsche Design watches. When Bloom helped launch the company’s watchmaking headquarters last month in Grenchen, Switzerland, he was wearing the Chronograph 1 – 1975 Limited Edition, which he helped launch in July 2025. Porsche’s original Chronograph 1 was one of the first chronographs with a black-coated steel case when it was introduced in 1972, kickstarting a trend that lasted for years. Inspired by the dashboard of a Porsche 911, it was created by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche and has been refined in the years since.

This month, Porsche is launching the Chronograph 1 – All Titanium Numbered Edition, based on last year’s 1975 Limited Edition. It’s a limited numbered series of 1,000 pieces per year. The case (40.8 mm) and bracelet are made of glass-bead-blasted titanium, with a titanium folding clasp and fine adjustment. The dial is all about legibility, with white markings over a black surface, including a larger-than-usual tachymeter scale printed on one of the deepest flanges in the business. The indexes and hands are liberally coated with Super-LumiNova. The movement, Porsche Design WERK 01.400 with chronograph and day/date display, is COSC certified, with a 48-hour power reserve. It retails for $8,250. Most will go to Porsche car owners like Bloom.

“The Chrono 1 just makes a lot of sense to me,” says Bloom. “It’s good design, and I think good design gives you that feeling of safety. It’s like when you’re sitting in the cockpit of your car, you feel like the design and the arrangement of everything makes sense, and it makes you a better driver.”

Porsche Design Timepieces is not a typical watch brand. For one thing, it’s the only automotive company with its own watch manufacture, a milestone for Porsche AG, the parent company of Porsche Design. It does not try to be all things to all people. It has not jumped on the minimalist vintage design bandwagon, and it does not follow the cycles of dial color trends. It sticks to making solidly engineered, meticulously designed chronographs aimed at auto aficionados. The watch is truly an extension of the world of Porsche, which means it’s all about design, engineering and quality. Eighty percent of its watch customers own a Porsche car. And like the Sonderwunsche factory commission cars, the watches are fully customized, usually to match the customer’s car.

“Our customers expect a certain level of quality,” says Rolf Bergmann, CEO of Porsche Design Timepieces. “We have elegant watches in our collections, but we have no plans to do dress watches with a lot of gold or with the important colors of the moment. Our core is sports watches, and we are working with titanium. It’s a technical approach. Everything we do is based on Porsche engineering, production and material. All the leathers we use on the strap, for example, are exactly the same material that we use in the interior of our cars. When we do colors, we don’t do colors just by chance. We transfer the colors from our sports cars onto our customer’s wrists. So yellow is not yellow, it’s racing yellow or speed yellow. Red is carmine red.”

Porsche watches were made under license for many years, first by Orfina, then by IWC and then by Eterna until 2014 when Porsche took over its own design and construction. The new 3,600-square-meter (about 38,000-square-foot) manufaktur (as the Germans call it) is in fact the former site of Eterna—but Porsche gutted it to the studs and completely rebuilt the inside. There are 10 watchmaking stations, rows of CNC machines, an advanced ventilation system and state-of-the-art quality control equipment and systems.

“The watches are as technically sophisticated, and crafted with the same passion as a sports car,” says Bergmann. “The idea of the new manufaktur is not to increase volume, but to secure quality, to secure processes and engineering capabilities, to control every process. The majority—more than a third of our business—is sports correlated watches that are built on customer demand. And to secure that in the long term, in terms of process, in terms of quality, in terms of engineering capabilities, that was the main reason for the new building.”

Porsche does not make its own movements—those are supplied by two respected Swiss companies: Concepto and Dubois Depraz—but all are engineered to Porsche Design specs, and they are proprietary to the brand. “The construction and development of the movement is ours: our technique, our intellectual property,” says Bergman.

The headquarters is also geared to delivering a direct customer experience, a growing trend among luxury brands. The first level is an exhibition and event area that traces the evolution of Porsche Design Timepieces since 1972. Although the upstairs factory itself is all business, the customer service area is sleek and black and red, (carmine red  and “Tiefschwarz” Porsche’s deep black color), with subtle car-related accents, including a staircase handrail upholstered in original Porsche interior leather. It houses what Bergmann calls the “configuration area,” known as the Fitting Lounge, where customers go to choose their finishes and co-design their custom-built timepieces. “We transfer the look, the design, the material, the style of their cars into the wristwatches,” he says. “The winding rotor, for example, isn’t just any winding rotor. It is exactly matching the wheel of our customers’ cars.” And here’s a bonus: A special door allows customers to drive their Porsches right into the building. Like drive-through watch shopping—surely a first in the industry.

Bloom has not yet collaborated with Porsche on a watch design,  but he says he would “love to. I’ve got some great ideas, so I’m definitely pitching them.”