WHOOP Meridian: Why the Jewellery-Inspired Band Isn't Just for Women
WHOOP just launched Meridian, a new take on their wearable tech with jewellery-inspired bands — featuring a sleek, Milanese mesh band with a tapered silhouette, built to read as jewellery rather than gym kit. This is different-looking product from anything the brand has made before. Part of the new campaign features Liverpool captain and longtime WHOOP Global Ambassador Virgil van Dijk and French rugby captain Antoine Dupont, making the case for the new Meridian range appealing to men.
The New Meridian Band
Meridian is a new band option for the WHOOP 5.0, not a new device — it houses the same sensors and delivers the same tracking accuracy as the standard WHOOP, just in a considerably more refined package. The Milanese mesh construction (the same fine, woven metal style you'll recognise from certain watch bracelets) and tapered profile are a deliberate departure from WHOOP's usual sport-strap aesthetic, and it comes in four finishes: Gold, Rose Gold, Alloy, and Black. It launched on August 27, 2026, priced at $149 / £119 / AU$219, and can be bought as a standalone accessory for existing WHOOP members rather than requiring a whole new device purchase.
WHOOP's own stated reasoning for creating the Meridian range tackles a well-identified problem: "Meridian is designed to solve one of the biggest gaps in health wearables: the fact that most people take theirs off exactly when continuous tracking matters" — specifically citing sleep quality outside a normal routine, recovery on off days, and stress during social events as the moments people most often remove a tracker, and the moments the data matters most.
The Ambassadors Make the Case for Men Directly
Virgil van Dijk's involvement isn't a one-off — he's been a WHOOP Global Ambassador and investor since 2022, having credited the platform's data with playing a real role in his recovery from a serious ACL injury. He's exactly the kind of long-term, credible WHOOP user the brand has built its reputation on, which makes his presence in the Meridian campaign specifically meaningful rather than a token gesture — this isn't a celebrity face bolted onto a product he's never used.
Antoine Dupont's involvement is arguably even more telling from a positioning standpoint. The French rugby captain's existing brand portfolio — Louis Vuitton, Tissot, Adidas — already sits at the exact intersection Meridian is aiming for: elite athletic credibility paired with genuine luxury and style sensibility. His presence in the campaign is a strong signal that WHOOP is deliberately positioning Meridian as a crossover product, not purely a women's design extension with a couple of male faces added for balance.
Between the two of them, Meridian's campaign is genuinely built around the same pitch this piece is making independently: that a jewellery-inspired band and elite athletic performance tracking aren't in conflict.
The Design Case, Beyond the Ambassadors
WHOOP already has a genuinely strong following among men who care about training data, sleep, and recovery — this isn't a new audience for the brand. What's new is a design that finally addresses a real, common complaint: the standard WHOOP strap reads unmistakably as sports tech, which makes it feel genuinely out of place with tailoring, a dress watch, or simply an evening where you don't want your wrist announcing "I am currently optimising my HRV."
The Alloy and Black colourways specifically solve this. Skip the Gold and Rose Gold finishes if a more overtly jewellery-coded look isn't your style — Alloy's brushed, gunmetal-adjacent finish and the Black option both read closer to a genuinely unisex, minimalist accessory than anything explicitly gendered. Worn under a shirt cuff, either could reasonably pass as a considered bracelet rather than a fitness tracker, which is precisely the point.
WHOOP has always been designed for continuous wear rather than the "swap for a dress watch in the evening" approach most smartwatch owners default to — Meridian actually makes that continuous-wear philosophy compatible with wanting to look considered while doing it, rather than forcing a choice between good data and a wrist that looks intentional.
It's a genuinely different category from the sports and GPS watches. Where a Garmin or COROS is explicitly an instrument — something you wear because you need the data, styling be damned — Meridian is the first WHOOP product that seems genuinely designed to be worn as an accessory first, with the tracking capability as the (excellent) hidden feature underneath.
Where It Sits Alongside Real Jewellery and Accessories
This is worth thinking about the same way we've approached accessories elsewhere on the site — as a genuine wardrobe component, not just a gadget. Meridian in Black or Alloy could reasonably sit in rotation alongside a proper watch, worn on the opposite wrist, without looking like mismatched technology bolted onto an otherwise considered outfit. That's a genuinely new proposition from WHOOP, and it's worth taking seriously even though the current marketing push is pointed elsewhere.
The Honest Caveats
It's still a subscription product underneath. Like every WHOOP band, Meridian doesn't change the brand's membership-based pricing model — you're paying for the band itself, on top of the ongoing WHOOP membership required to actually use the tracking features.
The campaign is still finding its footing across audiences. Early coverage leaned heavily on the female-focused imagery from Paris and Milan, and it's not yet clear how prominently van Dijk and Dupont's involvement will feature as the campaign rolls out more broadly — worth watching how WHOOP actually balances the messaging over the coming weeks.
Where This Leaves You
If you already own a WHOOP and have found yourself removing it before dinner, a night out, or anywhere the standard sport strap feels wrong, Meridian in Alloy or Black is worth the $149 as a genuine upgrade. And unlike most "does this menswear-adjacent product actually work for men" questions, you don't have to make the case entirely on your own here — WHOOP put Virgil van Dijk and Antoine Dupont in the campaign for a reason. Worth waiting for a few weeks of real-world reviews before committing, given how fresh this launch is, but the underlying idea, and the brand's own positioning, both point the same direction.
