In recent years, several of the world’s most famous watchmakers have launched spectacularly expensive advertising campaigns in an effort to imbue their scientific and technical watches with the glamour of war and adventure, thereby providing the closest contact to war or adventure most men will ever have. Omega paid untold thousands to a Hollywood studio to ensure that Jamesbondman Pierce Brosnan was wearing their Seamaster Professional Divers watch in Tomorrow Never Dies. (In the film, Bond uses the watch’s built-in laser to cut through the armour plating of a speeding train, thus escaping certain death!) Omega also made available to the public the X-33, the onl��y watch to have been worn on the moon, which gives you both Mission Time and Universal Time, whatever that means. Swiss rival Breitling surpassed even Omega in absurdly useless gadgetry: their B-One aviation watch stuffs the face both with hands and a digital display, including two time zones, a slide rule for quick calculations, and backlighting that is "compatible with night-vision goggles."

I remember receiving almost aggressive invitations from the publicity machine of the Swiss über-technicians TAG Heuer, who wanted me to attend "interactive" press conferences in a luxurious restaurant. I’m very glad I didn’t go: they lectured trapped fashion reporters about the car-racing, fighter-piloting history of their number-crammed timepieces, insisting on the crucial distinction between a "chronometer" (which means a very accurate watch) and a "chronograph" (which means a very accurate stopwatch). For a just a few thousand dollars more than the watch you are now wearing, you can have one�� that gives you a 1/10th of a second display – you’ll never miss the 6:15 to Parkingville again!

All these watches look the same, which is to say very ugly. They are festooned with knobs and dials and hands and rotating bezels. (The bezel is the outer ring with numbers on it – it works as a timer, and I’m not sure all the CEOs use it regularly.) All this publicity, of course, is not aimed at you and me, people who just need to know – to within five minutes or so – whether it’s lunchtime yet. The point is not to help you find your bearings in space, but to add to your business suit the invincible manliness and glamour of an astronaut. (Which reminds me of the math professor at my university who walked around with a tool kit on his waist, in case he was ever stuck in an elevator and needed to repair it. He didn’t exude glamour. All he exuded was weirdness.)

Victorian gentleman hid their watches in their pockets, because a true gentleman didn’t concern himself with the passing of time. The same is true today. The higher you are on the social ladder, the farther away you are from the actual running of machinery. The train driver may need a stopwatch, but you, sitting in the lounge car reading Proust, don’t even need a second hand. TAG Heuer’s marketing of the word chronometer is typical of their more-is-better aesthetic, and emblematic of its pretentiousness – for a gentleman would never use four syllables where he could use one��.

The most elegant watches, the one��s that connote education rather than mere riches, are the simplest and plainest. London’s upper-middle class, known as Sloane Rangers, wear "old, plain and gold" time-pieces – battered childhood watches are fine; even a Rolex is too flash. The French social equivalent, the "BCBG" elite, allow themselves old gold Cartiers or else very cheap Swatches.

Here’s the other big secret of watch style: you don’t need an expensive one��. Almost all of them have quartz function now, which is just as accurate in every watch – accurate enough for those who aren’t timing Olympic swimming events, anyway. So all you’re paying for is style. Outwardly, a fifty-dollar Timex looks very similar to a five-thousand-dollar Cartier. You can find the plainest Timex with a plain white face, a round gold rim, and a black leather strap. Sure, the Cartier is a little thinner, and the Roman numerals are a little more elegant. But are they $4,950 more elegant?

If you honestly have nothing better to do with five grand – and, again, that means you’ve thought of all the paintings you could buy, all the short films you could find – at least buy a slim Cartier Vendôme and not a chunky Rolex. (In the same league, the Piaget "Tradition" is also nice and refined, as is the HermPs "Arceau.") Whatever you buy, stick to plain leather straps; metal straps are literally flashy and give that fatal connotation of machinery.

Digital watches, needless to say, are unacceptable for any outfit or situation except actual triathlon competition. And avoid all secondary dials, numbers, and helium decompression valves. The true James Bond, despite what Omega’s marketers attempt to force on him, would not mar his dinner jacket with machinery.


SOURCE:
Russell Smith
Men’s Style: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Dress
Thomas Dunne Books 2007