The Rolex Perpetual Padellone takes its name from reference 8171, the complete-calendar moonphase Rolex made from the late 1940s into the early 1950s, which Italian collectors nicknamed the Padellone, or large frying pan, because its case looked oversized for the period. Rolex has rarely adopted a collector nickname as an official name, and doing so here signals how deliberately the new watch looks back. Announced in Milan on 15 September 2026, outside the spring launch window where Rolex introduces nearly all of its novelties, the Padellone is the second model in the Perpetual collection after the 1908 and the first Rolex to combine an annual calendar with a moonphase display. Reference 53505-0002 is the Everose gold version on a matte brown alligator strap, and it joins the permanent collection rather than arriving as a limited edition.
The 39mm case draws on the architecture of the Perpetual 1908 and is polished throughout in Everose gold, the pink gold alloy Rolex casts in its own foundry. Its divided bezel is finely fluted at the base and smooth and domed above, giving the profile a soft, rounded edge, and it is matched by a domed sapphire crystal and a curved winding crown. The case back is transparent sapphire. Set into the case band are four discreet correctors for the day, date, month and moonphase, each adjusted with a stylus supplied with the watch. The dial is intense white, with a grained center surrounded by a raised, satin-finished date track. Day and month sit in two adjacent windows below 12 o'clock, and the date is read from a blue central hand with a crescent-shaped tip that travels around the perimeter. Applied Arabic numerals at 3 and 9 o'clock, faceted hour markers and the hour and minute hands are all in pink gold, keeping the palette warm against the white surface. At 6 o'clock a chamfered opening shows a blue enameled moonphase disc carrying two meteorite moons among printed stars. The matte brown alligator strap is lined in green calfskin with tone-on-tone stitching and closes on an Everose gold Dualclasp, which keeps the watch light and slim at the wrist.
The Padellone's headline complication is an annual calendar with day, date, month and moonphase, and Rolex has engineered it so that the day, date and month change together, instantaneously, at midnight rather than advancing gradually over several hours. An annual calendar distinguishes between 30-day and 31-day months, so the date runs correctly through the year and needs only one correction, at the end of February. Rolex achieved this with a patented system that adds only a couple of components to an instantaneous date mechanism, keeping the calendar compact and robust. The correctors in the case band can be used at any time without risk to the mechanism, because the calendar disengages during setting. The moonphase completes its cycle every 29.53 days, and its two meteorite moons are finished differently, the full moon with a black face and the new moon coated in dark blue, so the disc reads clearly at any point in the lunar month. Winding is automatic, and the sapphire case back shows the yellow gold rotor and Côtes de Genève decoration beneath it. Rolex has fitted display backs to very few of its watches, and the Padellone follows the 1908 in treating the movement as part of what the owner is meant to see. Taken together, the dial recreates the complete-calendar face of the 1950s original while the mechanics behind it are entirely new.
Reference 8171 is regarded as a vintage Rolex grail, a large complete-calendar moonphase with day and month windows at 12 and a pointer date around the dial, and the Padellone keeps that arrangement almost exactly. The applied Arabic numerals at 3 and 9 o'clock borrow from reference 6062, the other celebrated Rolex calendar of the period. In the decades after the 8171 left production in 1953, Rolex built its reputation on Oyster sports watches, and complicated dress watches became a minor part of the catalog; the Cellini moonphase, retired in 2023, was the closest the brand came. The Perpetual collection changed that direction. It began with the 1908 in 2023, a slim dress watch with a transparent back, and the Padellone is the first model to extend the collection into complications. Rolex introduces nearly every new reference at Watches and Wonders in the spring, and its few standalone launches, such as the Deepsea Challenge, have been reserved for watches the brand wanted to stand alone. Releasing the Padellone on its own in September, under a name taken from the collector community, presents it as a considered statement about the direction of Rolex dress watchmaking rather than a seasonal addition. For collectors who know the 8171, the new watch reads as a direct answer to a reference that has been out of production for more than seventy years.
Reference 53505-0002 suits the collector who wants the Padellone as a dress watch first. The brown alligator strap keeps the Everose case light and discreet under a cuff, and the warm pairing of pink gold hands and numerals against the intense white dial is the most traditional reading of the design, closest in spirit to the gold calendar watches of the 1950s. The same Everose case is also offered on the Settimo bracelet, and a platinum version carries an ice blue dial, but this configuration is the one that most directly echoes the original 8171. The Padellone belongs to the permanent collection, and as with most new precious-metal Rolex references, authorized retailers are working through waiting lists. It will appeal equally to buyers arriving from long-established dress watch houses, who will recognize an annual calendar and moonphase delivered with Rolex's own emphasis on robustness and everyday use.
