Anyone who regularly scrolls through watch content online probably has seen him, the dark-haired guy wearing a jacket covered in wristwatches.
He also frequents events like the annual trade show Watches and Wonders Geneva. Last year, he stole some of the spotlight there with videos featuring the likes of Laurent Perves, chief commercial officer at Vacheron Constantin, and the young collector Amandine doing the Drop Challenge, a TikTok sensation that involved squatting, slowly, to Beyoncé’s 2013 hit “Partition.”
He is Danar Widanarto, 41. “I love to entertain the watch community,” he said. “And it makes me happy to make them happy. They’ve been having a stressful day at the fair, and I’m a stress reliever.”
Known as Chronondo — “It stands for chronograph and Indonesia,” Mr. Widanarto said, as he was born in the village of Delanggu, in Central Java — he now has 127,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 200,000 on TikTok (the website WorldTempus selected him as one of that platform’s six best watch accounts in 2022).
“I started my Instagram account nearly nine years ago,” he said in a video call from his home in Cologne, Germany. “My colleagues encouraged me because they said I was well dressed and fashionable. My aim was to combine watches and fashion.”
Mr. Widanarto posts humorous content daily, but in December the tone shifted abruptly when he announced that his apartment had been broken into and that his signature green jacket, which had 160 functional watches attached to it, was gone. He also lost a Cartier Tank Square Incurvé, three Furlan Marri timepieces and a Nomos Club.
“Most of the watches on the jacket were fashion watches; they were not really expensive,” he said. “But the memories, nobody can give me back the memories. That green jacket was my favorite because it had been everywhere.” He had five other jackets in the apartment, but each one sported only a few watches and, for some reason, they were left behind. (The police said Mr. Widanarto had not been targeted; about 130 burglaries were reported in his neighborhood that night.)
He reluctantly put out a call on social media in January, asking for watches to adorn a replacement. “I thought, ‘That’s not cool to beg people for watches, I could never do that,’” he said. “Then some people wrote me: ‘Danar, do it. You’ve been entertaining us over the years, you made us laugh and it’s our time to give back.’”
By early February, to his surprise, he had received about 300 messages of support — and 40 packages with watches from followers around the world and brands such as Milus, Héron and Fortis.
One package was from Martin Wingenbach, who posts on Instagram as fusselwingenbach, and he had included more than 20 inexpensive, colorful Chinese watches. “Not particularly valuable, but they add a lot of bling bling,” Mr. Wingenbach wrote in an email. “It was important to me that he was happy about it and got his new coat full of watches very quickly.”
Mr. Wingenbach also wrote that Chronondo had been an asset to watch enthusiasts: “He enriches everyone’s day. But he also means it seriously, and he regularly reports on new products and creates a connection between the manufacturers and the fans. He is always friendly, has an open ear and treats everyone very respectfully.”
A group of 12 watch fans associated with the German watch podcast UhrTalk even pooled their money to buy Mr. Widanarto a new Furlan Marri Nero Sabbia (555 Swiss francs, or $630). But that was only right, Christian Schmidt, one of the fans, wrote in an email, because when his watch collection was stolen in 2022, Mr. Widanarto had given him a MoonSwatch.
“This is something that gives me goose bumps, to be loved like this,” Mr. Widanarto said, “because some of them I’ve never met before, they’ve just been following me on Instagram. But I heard things like, ‘Your content makes me smile’ and ‘Your approach is different, it’s unique, it’s out of the box.’”
That was Mr. Widanarto’s intention from the start. He moved to Germany 21 years ago to learn the language. As he became accustomed to his new home, he began to notice the watches that his friends were wearing and then found his interest in horology growing.
He went to the Baselworld watch fair in Switzerland several times, but the event catered to the industry rather than the public, so “in 2017 and 2018, I wasn’t able to try any watches on,” he said.
Before the 2019 fair — Baselworld’s final edition — he decided to sew some watches he owned to a jacket that he had bought, in hopes of attracting notice. It was, he said, a nod to the watch sellers on the beaches in Bali, who open their jackets to showcase selections of (often fake) watches attached to the linings.
And it worked: At the fair, he said, “the attention was crazy.”
Now, under his watch-covered jacket, he usually wears traditional Bavarian clothing, complete with lederhosen, and he sometimes accessorizes with a conical sun hat, covered in 88 watches.
“Brands actually seek me out now, asking me to make videos,” he said, noting that some of his most popular content involves his paternal grandmother, Yoso, 93. During his annual visits to Indonesia, he often records video of her while she is trying to pronounce the names of Swiss watch brands or selecting her favorites from among the nominees for the annual Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève industry awards. “People love her,” Mr. Widanarto said. “They always tell me I should bring her along to fairs.”
Mr. Widanarto still has a day job as a concierge at Excelsior Hotel Ernst, a luxury hotel in central Cologne. Sometimes, he said, guests recognize him and ask, “Are you Mr. Watches?”
For the next few weeks, he will be busy using a large needle and thick thread to sew watches onto his new jacket. He considered three looks, and his followers helped him choose a green military style with gold-color buttons and braid, created by the Cologne designer Maria Lucas. Now he just wants to ensure that it will be ready for the April 9 opening of Watches and Wonders.
“I want to continue to entertain them,” he said of watch enthusiasts. “This is something I put in my heart.”
