The Emerald Sanctuary

There is a specific, high-frequency kinetic energy that exists backstage at the Dolby Theatre, a frantic ballet of headsets and ball gowns that usually precedes a televised emotional breakdown. But since 2016, Rolex has maintained a sort of geographic sedative within this chaos: the Oscars® Greenroom. It is a space designed with the explicit intent of lowering the collective pulse of the world’s most famous people. For the 98th ceremony, the watchmaker has constructed a retreat that feels less like a waiting area and more like the interior of a very expensive humidor, or perhaps the velvet-lined jewelry box of a particularly tasteful titan.

The aesthetic directive this year is one of historical immersion, marking a century since the 1926 debut of the Rolex Oyster. To celebrate the world’s first waterproof wristwatch, the brand has created a room that feels appropriately subterranean and sealed off from the elements, specifically the elements of public scrutiny and orchestral play-offs. The walls are swathed in a deep, emerald-green velvet so dense it seems to swallow sound, while the seating offers the kind of plush, low-slung comfort that makes one forget they are currently wearing thirty pounds of hand-beaded tulle.

Lighting the space is a series of soft, brushed-champagne accents and gold-toned anodized metals that provide a flattering, amber-hued warmth. It is the sort of light that suggests everyone in the room has just returned from a very successful yachting trip in 1954.

To further the sense of lineage, the walls are curated with portraits of legendary filmmakers and actors, many of whom have spent their careers wearing various iterations of the brand’s catalog while pretending to be people they are not. It is a subtle reminder that while a career in Hollywood is often a series of frantic sprints, the brand on their wrist is running a marathon.

The room’s centerpiece is a glass vitrine housing a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona. With its sunray green dial and yellow-gold bracelet, the watch sits in the center of the room like a silent, ticking North Star. It serves as a visual anchor for a space that is, ultimately, a tribute to the “perpetual”, a concept Rolex has championed through its Arts Initiative and its decade-long partnership with the Academy. By focusing on the “transfer of knowledge” from the masters of the past to the innovators of the future, the Greenroom becomes more than just a place to fix one’s makeup. It is a green-tinted manifesto on the endurance of craft in an industry that usually trades in the ephemeral.