The watch industry seems to be going through one of its more exuberant phases.
As technology advances, the materials in which watches are executed – from carbon fibre to hi-tech ceramic – become ever more exotic. The complication boom of recent years has inspired many makers to pack timepieces with extra functions and in some cases more than one tourbillon.
The zeitgeist has also had an impact on watch design, with brands such as Tiret and Jacob dictating an unapologetically ostentatious aesthetic. Meanwhile, Richard Mille has struck out in a design direction that has been as influential as it is futuristic.
And yet, while so many timepieces strive for novelty, there are watches that have changed little since they were launched and are still finding buyers in today’s crowded market.
At its most simple, a classic watch has a sober unadorned quality. It is the watch that a child will draw: circular, with two hands, with maybe a window for a date indicator.
A classic watch is one that looks equally good with a casual shirt and jeans or black tie
Pick a classic slim round watch from a classic maker such as Patek Philippe, Girard Perregaux, Audemars Piguet or Vacheron Constantin and you will always have something wearable and discreet, something of constant appeal.
Vacheron Constantin’s Ultra Slim was launched more than 50 years ago, and survives today virtually indistinguishable from the original. It is not the sort of thing that will get you noticed on the red carpet at the Brit Awards; but then nor will it ever look ridiculous.
Put simply, a classic watch is one which is never out of place.
As a useful rule of thumb, if you can envisage a watch looking equally good with a casual shirt and jeans or black tie, then the chances are that it is a classic.
However, there is another type of classic timepiece. Almost paradoxical, many watches have become classics as the result of challenging the orthodoxy of the age.
These are watches that were so avant-garde that they signalled a definitive move forward in horological design. The way this sort of classic distinguishes itself is that it is instantly recognisable without having to look closely for a brand name.
Take for instance the Cartier Tank – which made its debut just after the first world war – its distinctive quadrangular design was a harbinger of the Art Deco years and now, as it approaches its 90th birthday, it is probably the best known of luxury timepieces with the exception of, perhaps, the Rolex Oyster.
The Oyster’s classic status rests in part on the technical innovations devised by Hans Wilsdorf. The screw-down crown and the self-winding movement are features still in use on watches to this day. These two vital technical developments came about as a result of Wilsdorf’s mania for keeping the movements of his watches as hermetic as possible.
It was a similarly imaginative micro-engineering solution to the problem of protecting a fragile component; in this case the watch glass, which led to the creation of another classic, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, which celebrates its 75th birthday this year.
Its invention by Cesar de Trey, while travelling in India in the 1930s, is an horological legend.
During the twilight of the Raj, polo was one of the chief pastimes of British officers in India, and the only barrier to their full enjoyment of the sport was that their watches kept smashing.
“One has to imagine the scene: after a dusty polo match, over a cool drink at the bar of the officers’ club, one of de Trey’s British friends dangles a watch with a broken glass under his nose and asks a seemingly naïve question,” recounts Manfred Fritz in his book Reverso: The Living Legend, a history of the watch, “un-aware that he had just stimulated the intellectual act of creating the Reverso. It was a fine, stylish beginning.”
In 1931 a patent application was filed in France for a watch “that can be slid in its support and completely turned over”. Today, the Reverso is the watch for which Jaeger-LeCoultre is most famous.
This pattern of a technically daring watch which at first seems edgy and risky but soon wins over the market to become a classic is perhaps best exemplified by Audemars Piguet’s 1972 classic the Royal Oak.
In horological terms, the Royal Oak was Copernican in its effect upon the luxury watch market.
It turned accepted thinking on its head. Before then, a luxury watch was executed in a luxury metal: gold or platinum. Suddenly here was a steel watch that at SFr3,500 was more expensive than many gold watches.
Stranger still, while conventional luxury watches concealed such humble components as screws, the Royal Oak flaunted them, arranged around the octagonal bezel of this curious looking steel watch with its integrated case and bracelet design.
At first, even some of the management of Audemars Piguet were sceptical and the idea was to make a limited run of pieces. Today, however, the Royal Oak and various derivative models account for more than half of Audemars Piguet’s annual production.
The Royal Oak continues to influence watch design today, even though it was considered almost crazy at the time of its launch.
Given these horologically innovative times, it is pretty much inevitable that one of the exotic looking watches of the early 21st century, which might seem outlandish today, will emerge as classics for future generations.
