Jack’s Picks: Classically Sized Watches
The so-called dress watch has been under attack as a category of watchmaking at least since the early 1970s, when the first stainless steel, so-called luxury sports watches came out. The three most notable models are probably the Royal Oak, from Audemars Piguet; the Nautilus, from Patek Philippe and coming up third, in terms of numbers produced, the Vacheron Constantin 222; with an honorable mention owed to the Girard Perregaux Laureato.
The whole idea of a dress watch is a little vague as is the idea of a sports watch. A sports watch, it would seem, is one you can wear while playing a sport, but the definition is somewhat elastic. A sports watch is not necessarily any more robust than a dress watch, like the original Royal Oak, for instance, which used the ultra-thin automatic caliber 2121; AP (and others) used the caliber in what were classic, round gold dress watches as well.
What is a Dress Watch?
As far as I can tell the distinction between a dress watch and a sports watch is rooted in traditional ideas about informal, semi-formal, and formal dress codes. These specific codes have long since stopped mattering to most people, except under very specific circumstances. There were several industries where at one time, so-called business or business-formal attire was expected (law, banking). But the tech industry rewrote the style book when aspirational success was represented by 20 somethings wearing jeans and hoodies, instead of suits and ties. Tim Cook would probably only have to show up at a major Apple launch event in Cupertino wearing a suit and tie for the company’s stock to take a nosedive.
For men the way it used to break down was Casual, Informal (which traditionally meant a suit and tie, believe it or not), Semi-Formal (a tux) and Formal (morning coat by day and white tie by night). A lot of folks still think that Formal means a tux, but it doesn’t; the tuxedo was actually invented as a less formal and more comfortable alternative to the formal/white tie code which nowadays is almost never seen (the Met Gala caused an uproar, at least by events standards, when it set the men’s dress code to white tie in 2014 — real full on formal White Tie is so rare that almost no one had any idea what to wear).
Women’s dress codes are in the same categories but with differences in actual implementation (for informal, semi-formal and formal, it’s cocktail dress, evening gown, and ball gown). I’ve been invited to any number of events where the dress code on the invite was “cocktail chic” and if anyone can tell me what that means, I’ll die a happy man.
A dress wristwatch would therefore be something you’d wear with business attire, at least traditionally. These would normally be round, gold, and generally not complicated although there are certainly tons of watches which could be considered dress watches that don’t fit that exact description.
The Mainstream Dress Watch
The Patek Calatrava family of watches is probably the most classic example. Many years ago someone in the watch industry, reminiscing about the pre-luxury sports watch days, said to me, “In the old days, if a businessman was being driven around, the guy in the back would be wearing a gold Patek and the driver in the front would be wearing a steel Rolex and that was it.” The Golden Ellipse is another Patek family of watches which fit the idea of a classic dress watch to a T.
A. Lange & Söhne makes watches that fit the traditional idea of a classic dress watch, including several from the 1815 family, the Saxonia family, and the Lange 1 series — as a matter of fact, with the possible exception of its larger complicated watches (the Lange 31, the Zeitwerk, the Terra Luna) which are on the big side for the classic dress watch category, you could say that Lange didn’t make anything but dress watches until the Odysseus came out.
Audemars Piguet used to make a lot of dress watches but the collections that housed them have largely been shut down, and while there are quite possibly thousands of Royal Oaks being worn with suits — or at least blazers or sport coats — the watch is at least narrowly defined a sports watch, not a dress watch. In fact the impact of both the Royal Oak and the Nautilus had a lot to do with the fact that both watches had dress-watch levels of refinement in finishing, mixed in with very aggressive sports watch design codes.
Another company which produces an enormous number and variety of what would be considered dress watches, is Cartier. There is hardly a Tank which isn’t a dress watch; if Cartier has a crossover sports/dress watch in its classic collections it’s probably the Santos, which in gold feels very dressy, but in steel, on a bracelet, can give a Royal Oak or Nautilus a run for its money.
Some of the most admired releases from Cartier in recent years have been dress watches, especially in the Privé collection, including this year’s Pebble, the Asymétrique, and the Tank Chinoise, as well as the bell-shaped Cartier Cloche.
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso watches have the distinction of fitting the category of dress watches extremely well. The lovely Art Deco design and reversible case are the last word in a certain kind of horological elegance. However, and somewhat ironically, the Reverso was originally designed for a specific sport: it was created, in the 1930s, for polo players, to reduce the risk of the fragile watch glass being broken during play.
And Vacheron Constantin is still a major player in the world of classic dress watches, with just about every watch in the Historiques, Traditionelle, and Patrimony collections fitting the bill to some degree.
What is a Ladies’ Watch?
Dress watches are usually on the smaller side and they tend to cross over into the world of what were traditionally considered “ladies’ watches” or as the Swiss watch industry, with its affection for verbiage and euphemism, likes to call “the feminine client.” Now more than ever, women who are watch enthusiasts simply want to wear interesting watches and the idea of a gendered watch seems increasingly antiquated. The two biggest common factors that watches in the category seem to share are a smaller size and the use — more or less lavish depending on the watch — of precious and semi-precious stones.
There is, for instance, a tendency to classify watches at and under 34mm in the ladies’ watch category, but that’s not a practice enshrined in history, as there are probably millions of 34mm diameter watches which were sold as gentleman’s timepieces. Gem-set watches likewise are often considered ladies’ pieces, especially if they are under a certain size, but the category is elastic on this count as well.
However, traditionally feminine designs — and, let’s not forget, what “feminine” means is not fixed either; it has meant wildly different things at different times and places — are unquestionably a specialty of many of watchmaking’s most famous houses including Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Piaget. A beautifully designed high jewelry timepiece with high quality stones and settings is a horological treat anyone can appreciate.
Where the category gets into trouble is if it seems prescriptive, in terms of how a watch is presented, seeming to tell you what you should or should not wear. But if a watch suits your taste and budget, the fact that at some arbitrary point in the history of watchmaking it might have been classed as definitely a ladies’ watch or unquestionably for men only, should not stop you from buying and enjoying whatever you want — which is in fact, exactly what is happening more and more in the wide world of watch collecting.
For more on classic dress watches and classic watch sizes, check out Tim Mosso’s talk on the subject, on The Weekly Unwind, featuring Grönefeld, Roger Dubuis, and Jaeger-LeCoultre.
