“The boutique is all about that, upgrading the brand experience,” Tornare says. “It’s really about the repositioning of the brand in a way, the upgrading of the brand at all levels. I think we can always do better. It starts from the product of course, the level of finishing, the level of technicality that we bring to the design.”
“We won’t forget who we are, and we will never forget our core business, of course.”
That upgraded technicality is on show on the shapely wrist of TAG ambassador Patrick Dempsey, who is wearing a $23,500 TAG Heuer x Porsche ChronoSprint before the boutique reopening.
While Dempsey’s wrist looks great, it’s his blue eyes that could convince you to forget about saving for a house deposit and invest in a watch.
Patrick Dempsey as Dr Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd in the long-running TV series ‘Grey’s Anatomy’; celebrating his podium finish in the IMSA Tudor Series GT race at Virginia International Raceway in 2014 ; in Sydney at the reopening of the TAG Heuer flagship.Credit: Getty
They are the type of eyes that could sell you anything, from the melodrama of 11 seasons of TV series Grey’s Anatomy, to being illogically jilted by Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Baby or Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama.
“When I look at a specific watch, it reminds me of a time and a place and an experience that I’ve had with that Heuer,” Dempsey, 58, says. He has been a TAG Heuer ambassador for 10 years.
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“There’s the Monaco watch that I wore during my first year with TAG in 2014 and then, of course, there were those two Monaco watches I wore on the podium.”
By podium, Dempsey is not referring to the stage of the 2007 Screen Actor’s Guild Awards where he won alongside the cast of Grey’s Anatomy, or his Sexiest Man Alive accolade from People last year. He is a committed racing car driver having finished on the podium at The 24 Hours of Le Mans race and the GT class at Daytona in 2015.
“I’m disappointed that I missed the Bathurst 12 hour race a couple of weeks ago,” he says. “It’s one of the epic races of all time and was on my bucket list.”
Bathurst is not on Tornare’s bucket list, but he is keeping Dempsey on board to amplify TAG’s message.
“There are so many touchpoints between him and the brand, so it’s perfect,” Tornare says. “For me it’s all new but he’s been with the brand for a couple of years. But I do catch up quickly.”
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