What's the Perfect Size For a Wristwatch?

 Are you already way ahead of me?

Grown men -- mostly men. Men are to watches as women are to shoes: the primary market, dwarfing the volume sold to the other gender. Or maybe an apter comparison is jewelry: there are many sorts of jewelry made for women, and for men, mostly one kind is made: watches -- spend a lot of time and energy debating whether this watch or that watch is too big or too small.

By far, most of the comments on this subject seem to be made by men with slender wrists. I don't know how many times I've read a comment saying "I have slender wrists" and going on to say that they're glad that the newest model of this watch is smaller, or that they're disappointed that that watch is so big. I can't recall one single guy saying that he had big wrists and that this or that watch was too small.

I've seen I don't know how many debates of this sort, over a period of years. And not just random guys on the Internet participate in the debates, so do the most highly-respected journalists who specialize in watches, and so do the most highly-respected watch designers. And among watch enthusiasts, you don't get more highly respected than the top watch designers. 

Let's take the case of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, one of the most highly-esteemed of all long-running watch models, designed by Gerald Genta, as well-respected as they come, introduced in 1972 and still, apparently, easily selling as many as Audemars Piguet can make. Royal Oaks are probably most well-known for being worn by several of the characters in the HBO series "Entourage." I haven't seen the whole series, but if I've got this straight, Ari Gold, the Hollywood  super-agent played by Jeremy Piven, is given a gift of a Royal Oak by a beloved mentor who tells him it's the best watch in the world. Ari is awestruck by the gift, and soon several of his friends and acquaintances are also wearing Royal Oaks.  

The thing is, there have been many different models of the Royal Oak made since 1972. The original one was 39 millimeters wide -- big for 1972, smallish today. It was just 7 millimeters thick: very thin, for any era. And its case and bracelet -- watch guys refer to metal watch bands as bracelets. Bands made of soft material such as leather or rubber are called straps -- were made of stainless steel. This caused a sensation In 1972, luxury watches usually had cases and bracelets of gold or platinum, and Audemars Piquet has always been a luxury brand. Now, steel is not unusual at any price point. The Royal Oak is the watch which made that change.

But today, you can get a Royal Oak with a case made of gold, or platinum, or titanium, or still other materials besides steel. And steel is also still available. And straps are available as well as bracelets.

In 1992, to celebrate the Royal Oak's 20th anniversary, Audemars Piguet unveiled the Royal Oak Offshore. The original Royal Oak, as I mentioned, is 39 millimeters wide. The Royal Oak Offshore, or the ROO, as fans sometimes call it, is 41 millimeters wide. 

Might not seem like such a big difference. I know of men's wristwatches for sale today as small as 33 mm and as big as 50 mm. But making a new variant of the Royal Oak in 1992 which was 2 mm bigger than the original was enough to cause the designer of the original, Gerald Genta, to storm Audemars Piguet's booth at the Basel watch show where the ROO was introduced, shouting that his creation had been destroyed.  

So. Yes. People not only debate about the proper size of watches, they sometimes even fight about it. Even about differences in sizes which might be barely perceptible to most people. Is Ari wearing a conventional 39 mm Royal Oak in that picture above, or a 41 mm ROO? I don't have the slightest idea.

And then a couple of days ago, it finally struck me that the debate is absurd. Few if any people, I'm nearly 100% certain, have ever earnestly argued that a certain size of shoe, or belt, is correct, and that other sizes are either too big or too small. No, we realize that people come in all different sizes and that one size does not fit all. Similarly, a guy with a slender wrist might look best with a watch which is 37 mm wide (considered smallish today), while a much bigger man with huge wrists might be best suited with a watch 42 mm wide or even larger. It's just about as simple as that. It couldn't be clearer.

And yet the debate will continue. I'm sure of that. I don't know why it ever existed at all, I don't know why it will continue, but I know it will. Maybe it's no more or less than sneakiness on the part of watchmakers, selling more watches by making the newest ones bigger or smaller the way fashion designers sell more clothes by making the fashionable hemlines higher and the lower and then higher again.