Defining The Dress Watch When No One’s Dressing Up
The dress watch will always be with us – but will we always think of it as a dress watch?
One of the things about writing about watches (this is probably true of almost any specific subject, including cars, stamps, wine, and for all I know, 16th century Bavarian lutes) is that certain subjects reliably come up over and over again. This is however, if you ask me, a feature not a bug, as these subjects change depending on their context and contexts change as time marches on. Water resistance is one such topic; another is the so-called dress watch. What it is has always been a subject for open debate, and, now more than ever, as dressing up becomes an increasingly rare occurrence (thank you, COVID, for that and so many other things) the whole idea of a dress watch has become somewhat ill-defined, inasmuch as it implies categorizations of attire which no longer obtain in daily and professional life – at least, not as much as they used to.
What Is A Dress Watch?
“Dress watch” implies a watch which can be worn with so-called dressy attire. Conventionally, classifications of attire in order of formality, start at the bottom with casual (or even further down, perhaps, with the sort of outfit that will get you booted from a place that has a sign saying NO BOARD SHORTS OR FLIP FLOPS) and progress through business casual, business, semi-formal, and formal. Dress codes can also be specified for particular events – cocktail chic is one anxiety provoking non-specific code; I was at an event once where the code specified was “mountain chic” which leaves a lot of room for interpretation (it may depend on the mountain in question).
Dress Watches For Business
If we look at the accepted canon of dress codes, a dress watch is a watch suitable for wear with business attire, with special cases for semi-formal and formal. A sports watch is by tradition, not a suitable choice; a dress watch, so conventional wisdom goes (or used to go) is discreet, thin, and simple, with no additional complications, with the possible exception of a date.
The Patek Philippe Calatrava in all its permutations is probably the classic example from traditional watchmaking – originally, the Calatrava ref. 96, which was in Patek’s catalog from 1932 to 1973, was a small watch (especially by today’s standards) measuring 30mm or 31mm in diameter, time only, with small seconds. Its descendant in the modern catalog, the ref. 5227, is a 39mm automatic with center seconds and a date guichet, but it is like its predecessors, a simple, elegant watch – in fact, if there’s a single quality you could ascribe generally to a dress watch, it’s understated elegance.
The Dress Watch And Formal Dress Codes
Going up the scale of formality, we arrive next at semi-formal. This code is also sometimes called black tie, and the attire traditionally is a tuxedo, or dinner jacket as it is sometimes called. It is a very common, almost universal misconception that the tuxedo is “formal” but technically, it is not, having been invented by the Prince of Wales in 1895 as a way of creating a more comfortable alternative to the frock coat or tailcoat. Still, it’s about as formal as any of us are ever likely to get, short of being invited to a state dinner. A watch worn with a tux according to authorities like Alan Flusser, author of Dressing The Man: Mastering The Art Of Permanent Fashion, should be thin, preferably in white metal, and time only.
The most formal dress code (for men) in Western culture is white tie for evening, and morning coat for daytime. As this is the most formal code, the stipulations are highly specific; white tie consists of a black tailcoat over a white dress shirt with a wing collar, white waistcoat, and white bow tie; trousers are black with a satin stripe on each leg and shoes are black pumps. I’ve never been to an event that required white tie, or a morning coat, but here the tradition is that no watch is worn at all (on the theory, one sometimes hears, that looking at the time is an insult to one’s host). The code is so unfamiliar that the last time Anna Wintour tried to give it a shot at the Met Gala, the result was chaos.
Is There Such A Thing As A Casual Dress Watch?
A dress watch by tradition is worn with business attire, but nowadays business attire is seen a lot less often. A lot of us have gotten out of the habit and moreover, expectations have changed; business casual is pretty generally accepted and according to an article in The Harvard Business Review (and those folks ought to know, if anybody does) this is pretty much a good thing as it allows for better comfort (albeit style ideally is comfortable before it’s anything else) and greater scope for self-expression.
This means that a watch you wouldn’t normally think of as a dress watch is perfectly fine (mostly) in a professional setting and even in, say, a law firm where partners and associates still put on a jacket and tie every day, nobody is going to think that a Rolex or other sports watch is out of place. In any case, there have been crossovers between sports and dress watches ever since 1972, and the introduction of the Royal Oak – a sports watch inasmuch as it’s a steel watch on a steel bracelet; it is also indisputably thin and undeniably elegant.
A dress watch in other words, can be worn not just to match a now partly outmoded definition of what “dress” means – it can also dress up a more casual look and as with more casual office attire, it can also be a form of personal expression outside the domain of thin, round, and time-only. A Calatrava is a dress watch but so is, obviously, a Reverso, a Cartier Tank, any number of watches in steel from NOMOS Glashütte, a whole boatload of Grand Seiko, and many others that might not fit the traditional definition, including the Royal Oak and the Nautilus. This is all without even getting into the whole notion of mixing high and low, which is at this point a mainstream style and fashion trope.
A dress watch used to be a watch worn when you dressed up; a dress watch nowadays, free from the constraints of traditional dress codes, is a way of injecting a particular kind of elegance into any thoughtfully put together outfit. I still wouldn’t wear a watch with white tie though – call me old fashioned, but like using silverware in the right order, there is sometimes a pleasure to be had in experiencing a tradition, even one you don’t live with on the regular.