Open Letter to the Urban Gentry

You recently gave some advice about dress watches on your You Tube channel and I'm confused: a Richard Mille is wrong because "it draws attention to itself," but the most intense 5,000,000,000-watt design by Swatch is very, very right because it "catches the eye and can be a great conversation starter"? Is it a matter of price: eye-catching and inexpensive is fine, but if it's expensive, please tone it down? I realize too that Richard Milles are sometimes also quite large, but I feel as if there's more going on here than size. Full disclosure: I haven't yet seen a Richard Mille irl, maybe if I did I'd instantly understand what upsets so many of you about them. (Ditto for Hublot.) 

   

 

 

More full disclosure: I'm 6'3" and have big wrists, situated between big arms and big hands, and maybe I'm just a tiny bit defensive about remarks about big watches. Okay -- there's no maybe about it, and it's more than just a tiny bit. For some people, clearly, in some situations 40mm is starting to risk being a bit too big, but just remember: for other people, in some situations 40mm can sometimes be a bit small.  

I myself am quite daring in my fashion choices: for example, I like to compliment a tux not only with a huge shiny Seiko diver, but also with a scuba mask, oxygen tank and flippers. If the host's or hostesses' feelings are hurt by the thought that I might leap into the ocean at any moment and swim away 10 meters below the surface, well then, maybe he or she shouldn't have invited me to begin with! Not everyone fits at every kind of party, I quite agree.

Seiko 5 vs Almost Anything by Swatch

It's Enten – Eller Time again at The Wrong Monkey!

To people who are really into watches in a big way, the Seiko 5 is legendary. If you talk to, say, 100 experts on watches, and ask them which brand gives the most value for the money, and which model is the very best bargain at all, you won't necessarily get two sets of 100 identical answers -- but there is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that the brand which will get mentioned most often is Seiko, and that the model which will get mentioned most often is the Seiko 5.

The question is, to how many people who are not into watches in a big way will this matter? I'm just going to assert that people who are into Swatches --

-- in a big way, are rarely into watches in general in a big way.

Those of us fascinated by watches in general are mostly men. Think of it this way: women have shoes, we have watches. There are some men who have huge collections of shoes, and some women who have huge collections of watches, but not many. Most of the watches sold by far are men's watches, just as most of the shoes sold by far are women's shoes.

I'm not sure that most Swatch owners are men.

Those of us fascinated by watches in general tend to be very much interested in the functionality of the watch. Mechanical watches -- watches which are powered by springs, springs which are wound either manually or, in the case of what is known as an automatic watch, are wound by the motion of the wrist of the person wearing the watch. Most mechnical watches sold these days are automatic -- almost always interest us more than battery-powered watches. We're interested in accuracy, precision (those are two different things. You probably already knew that or probably don't care), reliability, unusual features which made not be at all visible unless the watch is taken apart -- function, function, function. You want to get a watch enthusiast's heart racing? Show him a watch which you wind up and it runs for 5 or 10 (or 30, or 50) days before it needs to be wound again, that keeps time within 1 or 2 seconds per 24 hours, that will probably run for 100 years without being serviced, but don't speak of the watch going without a routine servicing every few years unless you want to cause the watch enthusiast pain.

Almost all Swatches are battery-powered, and don't open up for servicing, so you just throw them away when they stop running. Both the batteries and the throwaway aspect make them much less interesting for us watch nuts. A few years ago, Swatch finally introduced its first spring-powered watch, the Sistem 51, and we watch nuts leaned forward in great interest -- until we learned that the Sistem 51 didn't open up, cannot be repaired, and then most of us leaned at least partway back again. Then a couple of years later Swatch introduced the Sistem 51 Irony, which opens up. At last, there is a watch from Swatch that a lot of us would consider buying.

Still, though, it's just the one model, and Swatch continues to make almost all their watches battery-powered and disposable, so they're still really not about us. Which makes it rather hard to get very enthusiastic about them.

However, Swatches look absolutely amazing. Here, look at some more of them:

Nothing else on Earth looks like Swatches. Even those of us who are into mechanical watches can see that. And that, quite obviously, is what Swatches are all about to most of the people who own them.

So why am I telling you all this? Because, a little earlier, an acquaintance of mine expressed an enthusiasm for Swatch. I was about to tell her that, for about as much money as a Swatch, she could get a Seiko 5, and that if she wore a Seiko 5, any watch geek who saw it on her arm would immediately find her interesting.

And then I thought -- does she have any desire, at all, to be interesting to watch geeks?

And I simply couldn't convince myself that she did. Indeed, it was pretty easy to imagine her being creeped out by the idea of drawing a lot of attention from watch geeks.

If I became extremely knowledgeable about shoes, would that make me more interesting to women? Oh well, it's a rhetorical question, because I'm not going to become extremely knowledgeable about shoes. If a woman were extremely knowledgeable about watches, would that make her more attractive to me? I'm really not sure that it would. In fact -- based on the few women I've known who are real watch aficionados, I'd have to say: it makes them neither more or less attractive. To me. Perhaps it makes them irresistible to some others.

Some Surprising Things About Certain Watches

Let's start with the Swiss luxury watchmaker Bovet, which manufactures a variety of watches which can be converted from wristwatches with leather straps to tabletop clocks to pocket watches on chains, and back again to the wristwatches,

all in a matter of seconds, with no tools, easy as can be, just by pushing some buttons and pulling some levers. These watches by Bovet are interesting to me because I like pocket watches, and the world is not exactly swimming in new high-quality pocket watches these days. (New cheap crap pocket watches: there you got more to choose from. I think maybe because of steampunk, but I'm not sure. How much do I know about steampunk? If I weren't into pocket watches, I might still have never even heard the word "steampunk," that's how much.)

If I had one of these Bovets, maybe I would be surprised to learn that I actually occasionally preferred to use the wristwatch- or tabletop clock-configuration. But it would be a surprise if I ever owned a Bovet, because the only ones I've eve seen cost 5 or 6 figures.

I've finally broken free of The Watch Snob's disdain for watches from Panerai, and allowed myself to covet them unreservedly, although I can't afford them either. Today I came across a review of the Panerai PAM 560,

And was quite surprised to see that this beautiful thing, with a MSRP closer to 10 grand than 5, doesn't have a second hand.

Then I looked at pictures of a lot of Panerais and was surprised to see that many of them have no second hands.

Then I thought about that for a while, and had to come to the surprising conclusion -- surprising to me. It may not surprise you at all -- that many very expensive watches from some of the most top-end of top-end brands don't have second hands. For example, take another look at that Bovet higher up on the page: do you see a second hand anywhere? I don't. I see an hour hand and a minute hand, are they're both on a very tiny dial. It seems that with this model, Bovet's biggest concern about the dial was that it not interfere with looking at the movement -- what you and I might be more accustomed to referring to as "the guts." And the guts are lovely to look at, no doubt.

Something that surprises me even more about that Panerai: it's got an 8-day power reserve, but no power reserve indicator. I've seen pictures of the back of the watch, it's not there either. This is a hand-wind watch, not an automatic -- is the owner supposed to remember how many days ago he or she wound it?

That Bovet, with the tiny dial and no second hand: I'm sure it's accurate to within a few seconds a months, that's what that pretty movement is there for. But it's seems to me that you'd have to own it for a year or so, and pay very close attention, to know for sure if it really was that accurate. But many of us have to re-set our watches every 6 months to change between Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time -- clearly, some people are prepared to pay huge amounts of money for watches, huge in part because they are extremely high-accuracy and high-precision instruments, and are content not to be able to check that accuracy.

Well, glass houses and stones: there's no need to have any kind of watch at all these days.

Now we come to a watch which I could actually afford, if I saved up for a while: the Swatch Sistem51 Irony:

Swatch is the Swiss watch brand known for making inexpensive and disposable quartz watches with plastic cases. Disposable, because the plastic cases are sealed shut so they can't be opened up for repairs.

A few years ago, Swatch introduced the Sistem51, a mechanical watch. I first heard about the Sistem51 a couple of days ago. 51 is the number of parts in the watch, a very low number of parts. Some very expensive watches (see for example Bovet, above) have as many parts as possible, are complicated for the sake of being complicated. Indeed, the French word "Complication" is part of the name of some of the most expensive watches offered by various companies. But you can go the other way, too, and see how much a watch can do with how few parts. The Seiko 5, for example, has become a legend because of its simple, and tremendously reliable, design. I've been trying to find out exactly how many parts a Seiko 5 has. I'm sure various models of the 5 have different numbers of parts. I'm pretty sure none has as few as 51.

The first Swatch51's came with plastic cases which were sealed shut: not made to be repaired, just like other products from Swatch. But then I learned to my surprise about the Sistem51 Irony, released just a couple of years ago: these are watches with metal cases which open up for maintenance. Swatch is making concessions to watch fanciers who like permanence.

At first I thought they were called Irony because it was ironic that Swatch was going in this direction. But having thought about it some more, I'm now almost entirely sure that it's because, instead of the usual Swatch plastic cases, the Ironies have metal cases. Steel cases. Steel with iron in it. Huh? Get it? Iron. The cases are iron-y. Iron-y -- huh?! Huh?! Get it?

I'm mostly interested in the Sistem51 Irony at this point because some people who seem to know watches well seem tremendously excited about it. It's like smoke and fire: their excitement is there, like smoke, which means that maybe someday I, too, will be excited about it -- like catching fire. There is a lot of excitement about the fact that the Sistem51 is entirely assembled by robots. I was surprised to learn that it is (or was? I don't know) the very first watch with no hand-assembly. Experts seem to regard the Sistem512 design as revolutionary. They think it could lead to huge, huge steps forward in watch design. (Has it already? I don't know.)

So, okay, I'll keep an eye on it.

I've read two different head-to-head reviews comparing the Swatch Sistem51 Irony to the Seiko 5. They're both about the same price. The Irony is slightly more expensive. Both reviews concluded that the Seiko 5, generally regarded as the best deal in the world of watches, is slightly better than the Irony -- but only slightly. They both suggested that if a person was really into watches and wanted to have more than one, but was poor, they might want both the Seiko 5 and the Irony.

I'm not going to get an Irony right away. Unless someone gives one to me.

Swiss Watches

Geneva is in the easternmost corner of Switzerland, surround by France to the north, east and south. From Geneva the Swiss-French border runs about 100 miles, as the crow flies, to Basel, where the Swiss, French and German borders all meet. The area along this Swiss-French border between Geneva and Basel is quite mountainous, and was somewhat isolated before the invention of the railroad. In the early 18th century, most of the Swiss people living along this border were farmers. But snow prevented them from growing anything for about 6 months of the year. So they began to make parts for watches, to earn a little extra money. Many of them soon found out that they could make more money making these watch parts than by farming, and began to make watches all year round, and their descendants have been watchmakers ever since. That's why so many big Swiss watchmakers are headquartered in tiny little Swiss mountain villages.

At first, Swiss watchmakers mostly concentrated on making inexpensive products. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the US was known as the place where the best watches were made. But by the mid-20th century, Swiss watches considered the best, and many of them had become quite expensive. Swiss watchmakers prided themselves in making their watches more and more accurate and precise.

Then quartz watches appeared. In the early 1970's, quartz watches made all over the world were more accurate than the finest spring-driven Swiss watches at a fraction of the price. In Switzerland, this time is called the Quartz Crisis.

Some Swiss watchmakers responded by making their own quartz watches. Many went out of business. Some of the oldest makers of fine watches were bought up by the Swatch Group, named after Swatches, the cheap, colorful, mostly quartz-driven watches which were a popular fad in the 1970's. As of 2002, Breguet, Blancpain, Leon Hatot, Jacques Droz, Glashuette, Omega, Longines, Rado, Tissot, Calvin Klein Watches, Union, Certina, Mido, Hamilton and Flik Flak belonged to the Swatch Group, along with Swatch itself, which is still around and still makes watches, mostly quartz but also some mechanical ones. How good are Swatch watches? I have no idea.

ETA is a Swiss company which mostly makes watch movements. A movement is the motor of a watch. ETA makes both quartz and mechanical movements. Many watchmakers both in Switzerland and in other parts of the world use ETA movements in some or all of their watches.

Some Swiss watchmakers have remained proudly independent, not being bought by the Swatch Group or any other corporate conglomerate, and making most or all of the movements for their own watches. (Watch afficienados and watch snobs have long and heated arguments about just how important it is for watchmakers to use movements they have made themselves -- also referred to as "in-house movements.") Three such companies, held in such high esteem that many people referred to them as the "Holy Trinity," are Patek Philippe (established in 1851), Vacheron Constantine (est 1755) and Audemars Piguet (est 1875). Although, these days, some would say that Jaeger-Lecoultre (est 1833) has become better than any of them. One thing's for sure: all 4 of those companies make very high-quality watches, at prices ranging from 4 to 7 figures per watch.

And new watch companies are springing up all the time, in Switzerland and elsewhere, some making cheap crap and others making very good watches, and some in between.

But not very many new pocket watches, which makes me sad. And most of the new pocket watches seem made for nostalgia, imitating old ones instead of trying to embrace being new, and that makes me sadder. As an extreme example: the new Omega pocket watches actually ARE old to a great degree: their movements were made in the 1930's. Recently someone found these 80-year-old watch movements in a warehouse, and Omega decided to refurbish them to make expensive nostalgic pocket watches. Make new watches which are proud of being new, I say, and don't insist that we wear all of them on our wrists! I can't be the only guy in the world who feels this way, although maybe I am.