Please, Wear Your Watch
From the kitchen to the mountain, your watch can take it.
Last week, on July 27, 2023, Kristin Harila summited K2 and, in doing so, stamped her name firmly in the history of mountaineering. With that climb, she broke the record for the fastest true-summit ascent of the world’s 14 eight-thousanders (so-called because each has a peak more than 8,000 meters above sea level) in staggeringly short order. Despite the inherent challenge that tackling the world’s tallest mountains presents, Harila accomplished the feat in just 92 days. And she did it with a Bremont strapped to her wrist.
Kristin is far from the only person to push herself, and the watches she wears, to the extreme. Rafa Nadal does the same, strapping on a Richard Mille light enough to make you laugh every time he steps on the court. Tommy Paul took to the grass courts at Wimbledon this summer wearing a De Bethune. Bubba Watson is also in the Richard Mille camp, and Laurent Ballesta dives with a Blancpain outside his wetsuit. Astronauts as far back as Ed White have worn their Speedys on the launchpad and beyond our atmosphere. Hell, Tudor watches are worn for just about everything — they even have their own cycling team.
As watch brands frequently remind us, watches are meant for doing. They are not designed to rest in a box, but rather to tackle the world, be our constant companions, and share in all of life’s adventures. After all, if Harila’s Bremont S300 can make it to the top of Everest and back, yours can probably handle Flying Mountain on your next trip to Acadia.
A Note on Cutlery
Now, as fair warning to my audience, I’m about to stop talking about watches for a little while and start focusing on another topic near and dear to my heart — kitchen knives. This is because, as a general rule of thumb, expensive things can be delicate. They can demand a level of care and attention that less costly options rarely command. Kitchen knives are a perfect example of this.
Kitchen knives are ubiquitous, and if, like many, you don’t spend a lot of time obsessing over them, they can (perhaps like watches) seem relatively straightforward and replete with redundancies. Let me assure you, as someone who makes a living exploring the esoteric particularities of niche subjects (and as someone who recently upgraded my kitchen knives — gotta write what you know), there is more to these knives than meets the eye.
From the least expensive stamped knives picked off a hanging rack in a supermarket aisle to the most impressive hand-forged Damascus steel knives, the sheer range of options available to help you dice an onion are staggering. And it can be easy to dismiss the high-end in the face of inexpensive alternatives.
Cheap knives are great. They are typically robust, easy to sharpen, resistant to rust, and they are entirely replaceable, should the need arise. They are tools fit for a purpose, and they certainly have a place in every kitchen.
But all that robustness comes at a cost. Knives of this ilk are typically heavy, thick, and — for lack of a more technical term — blunt. All of this comes into stark relief the first time you make a cut with a higher-end knife (if you’re looking to elevate your kitchen knife game, I cannot recommend the Japanese maker Shun highly enough).
When you step up in price, kitchen knives can be an absolute joy, cutting through proteins and vegetables like butter. But these knives require a level of attention that may be unfamiliar to many. You have to be conscious of what materials you cut on, how you store, how aggressively you cut, how often you clean (and, more importantly — dry) your knife. And you have to respect that to get the best out of this small flat piece of metal, you have to treat it well.
The same is true of watches.
But quickly, while I have you on knives for a second, please stop putting your kitchen knives in the dishwasher. You’re ruining your knives. End of PSA.
The Modern Watch
Watches today are remarkable. A modern Rolex will keep time to a spec of -2/+2 seconds a day. At any time in human history before the advent of the quartz watch, that would have been a staggering claim. That Rolex actually manages to back that claim up would have been sheer lunacy.
Thanks to a host of improvements, especially CNC and CAD, the tolerances of modern mechanical watches have gotten incredibly tight, and the quality of manufactured parts has risen astronomically. In 2023, instead of simply drawing out sketches, a full digital render of a movement or watch can be developed in advance of production to test for unnecessary stresses, inefficiencies, and flat-out mistakes.
The result is that a modern mechanical watch of nearly any make is an impressively resilient thing. We often hear about the extremes — of Bremont launching a watch with an ejector seat, or Omega strapping a prototype dive watch to the arm of a submersible — but the day-to-day durability of watches is nothing to turn your head at.
The new Rolex Perpetual 1908, announced at Watches & Wonders 2023, is water resistant to 50 meters and, knowing Rolex, that’s a real promise. Now, I’m not saying you should bring your 1908 on your upcoming dive trip to Bonaire, but if you get overexcited at your friend’s wedding and wind up in the pool, your dress watch will survive the moment.
To think, the dressiest watch in the Rolex lineup, one that doesn’t even boast an Oyster case, would do just fine with a dip in the pool. Granted, the leather strap might not love you in the morning, but throw it on a NATO, and you’re doing just fine (also, if anyone has put their 1908 on a NATO, please reach out to me).
An Impassioned Plea
Wearing a luxury watch is a special privilege. It can be easy, in our small and very vocal bubble, to forget that watch collecting is still a niche hobby, one that is beyond the scope of most people.
Watch brands get this in a way we often ignore. They understand that the vast majority of their client base aren’t collectors with dozens, if not hundreds, of watches. They know that most of their customers are just people looking for a luxury experience who want one, or maybe two, nice watches. They aren’t looking to sit on a waitlist for years on end; they want to go into a boutique and walk out with a new companion that will be with them through everything.
And those people are going to wear the hell out of their watches. They will garden in them, exercise in them, go to work, go on vacation. They might even wear one of those watches on a special day, like their wedding, or the birth of their first child. And they will take care of these things.
We should all aspire to a little of that, because these watches can take way more than we will ever throw at them, and, over time, they’ll thank you for both the care you offer, as well as the slightest hint or reckless abandon that makes for a really great memory.
All watches shown in this piece, unless otherwise noted, come from the collection of Rob Huberty. To hear more about his life and collection, you can watch his Collector Conversation with Tim Mosso here.