When diverse timepieces are united by an appreciation for great design

Last fall, Adam Golden, founder of the Miami-based pre-owned watch dealer Menta Watches, began exchanging messages on Instagram with a prospective client whose tastes, at first glance, seemed easy to peg.

“I looked at his profile and thought, ‘Latin American producer/talent agent—for sure a stereotypical Miami watch collector who wears these modern flashy Pateks and APs,’” Golden recalls thinking, referring to watches by the high-end Swiss brands Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet.

The client, however, challenged Golden’s assumptions from the start. “He was inquiring about these watches that are not your stereotypical watches,” Golden says. “And the first watch he shows me is a very rare connoisseur watch. And I was like, ‘Wow, I have this guy all wrong.”

What Golden quickly learned about Lex Borrero, a former Roc Nation Records executive who now serves as co-founder and CEO of the talent, media and entertainment company Neon16, is that his love for watches runs deep. Borrero, who splits his time between Miami and Los Angeles, was born in Colombia, where his father was a rally car driver and his mother was a businesswoman-turned-pastor. He was six years old when he laid eyes on his first chronograph. “I loved racing, and I loved the culture of racing,” Borrero tells Robb Report. “And I was like, ‘Okay, zero to 60 makes sense. This is how we time how fast our cars are going.’”

As a young adult, Borrero collected G-Shocks and Batman and Spider-Man watches and then quickly moved on to his first TAG Heuer, a Monaco that he borrowed from his brother-in-law and never gave back.

A US$3,000 Frederique Constant world time watch sent Borrero spiralling into the world of complications. “Slowly and surely, my collection has grown to have some key pieces,” Borrero, now 39, says, citing a Cartier Crash, rare Pateks and rare TAG Heuers as some of his foundational timepieces. “I’ve always been driven by design.”

For Borrero, the aesthetic details of a timepiece supersede all other qualities, including its price or ability to confer status—as evidenced by the fact that one of Borrero’s favourite watches is a US$100 Timex whose seconds indicator is “a ball that moves like it’s floating,” he says.

“I always wore, for example, 39 millimeters when everybody was wearing 42s and 43s with the [AP] Offshores. I love the classiness of how the watches looked on my wrist. And I was able to acquire a lot of watches people love right now when no men wanted them.”

About six years ago, during Paris Fashion Week, Borrero saw someone wearing a Cartier Crash—“way before it became super hyped,” he says. “I had never seen that watch, and I went up, and I asked about it.” Soon, Borrero bought himself a vintage Paris edition. “Then, maybe two years later, Kanye and Tyler the Creator wore the Crash and it became like a US$200,000, US$300,000 watch when I had bought it for, like, 70 grand.”

More recently, Borrero has begun to further explore the vintage watch arena with the help of Golden, whose Menta Watches office just so happens to lease a space owned by Neon16. “We have tons of office space in Miami, and they were looking for an office,” Borrero says. “My CFO is like, ‘Hey, by the way, we rented a space to some watch guy. Maybe you know him?’ And that’s how Adam and I connected.”

In January, Borrero tapped Golden and Yoni Ben-Yehuda, watch director at the retailer Material Good, for advice about a purchase he was considering: the new Tambour Convergence timepiece that Louis Vuitton unveiled at 2025 LVMH Watch Week. The jump hour model has a mirror polished rose gold case that covers nearly its entire face.

“Everybody was like, ‘Nah, don’t get it,’ and I was like, ‘I love it, I’m going to buy it.’ And I ended up becoming the first delivery,” Borrero says. “I like the fact that, in time, it’ll tell its own story with the scratches.”

As a rule, Borrero holds on to his watches. “The key pieces I’ll never sell,” he says. “They speak to the eras of my life.”

A classic example is the Jacob & Co. Five Time Zone watch. “I grew up in hip-hop and in the music industry, everybody had that watch,” Borrero says. “About a year and a half ago, I did a podcast with my three best friends from high school, and I bought all of us the Five Time Zone timepiece. I called Jacob and had him personally deliver it because it was our dream watch.”

The more Borrero talks about his watches, the clearer it becomes: Even more important than their designs are the stories behind his favorite timepieces, both the watchmaker’s and his own. A recent acquisition at Tiffany & Co. offers an example: “I bought their new diamond-cut circular Eternity watch—on the markers, it has every style of diamond cut that they do, including the heart shape,” Borrero says. “I saw it and thought, ‘It’s so beautiful. It’s a 33 millimeter, but it wears incredibly. And it has the history of their diamonds on the markers. I was like, ‘Why not? It’s Tiffany, right?’”

This story was first published on Robb Report USA. Featured photo by Lex Borrero