That night, those customers included recognizable faces like New York Giants rookie Saquon Barkley, New York Knick Lance Thomas, and designers Maxwell Osborne and Heron Preston. The rest of the faces weren’t ones TMZ would easily put a name to, but they were just as recognizably rich: men and women with Prada dresses, Chanel purses, and gaudy watches filed into the space.

The attendees mingled amongst themselves, naive to the fact Mayer would perform that night. At one point, all the gravity in the room shifted when Osborne dapped up Barkley, who was standing next to Thomas. Gloved men weaved through attendees with watches from Audemars and showed them to interested parties.

Watch:

GQ Editors on Their Menswear Addictions

The event was a portrait in how the super-wealthy shop. As retailers have morphed over the past couple years to offer a more compelling proposition than the ability to stay home and order everything while still in sweatpants, they’ve largely gravitated to one concept: experiences. Nike has a basketball court on the top of its Soho store, Todd Snyder offers haircuts at his Manhattan flagship, and any retailer without a coffee bar these days is just asking for trouble. But what do you give the sort of customer who can buy, or who already has, everything? That’s where John Mayer comes in.

In the back room, in the shadow of David LaChapelle’s photograph of a naked Amanda Lepore snorting diamonds like cocaine, Audemars Piguet’s global CEO François-Henry Bennahmias told me that the intention of the event was to “also understand that at the end we're friends,” he said of the attendees. “That there is a real relationship between them and the brand. People see that, they see it's genuine, and that's what they're after.”

One of those friends is Steven Devor, who flew in from Columbus, Ohio, for the night just to attend the event. He was dressed casually: chambray shirt, white jeans, and an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak with a rubber strap. His wife Kristen toted a hot-pink Louis Vuitton purse and wore Gucci’s signature furry loafers, a Bulgari necklace, and an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph. Both of the Devors bought their watches earlier this year; the couple had even hosted their own Audemars Piguet event at home just a couple weeks prior.

In between sips of white wine, Devor told me the event was working like a charm. “There's a lot of cool watches, there's a lot of cool brands, but I can't imagine us investing—because it's an investment—in anything but Audemars from this point,” he said. The brand, he explained, “feels like a family” to him. He told me a story about visiting the Audemars offices in New York on his daughter’s seventh birthday and the U.S. CEO Antonio Seward brought out a cupcake speared with lit candles. That stuck with him, which was the point. “We want to be able to deliver to our clients something that money can't buy,” Bennahmias said.