With thousands of new watches being presented annually, working out which of them best suit individual personality traits has never been more confounding. To make sense of it all, we’ve come up with five-character types – all of them denizens of the British capital and shaped by London’s multifaceted culture and institutions – and decided which timepieces most reflect their whims, wherefores and raisons d’être.
THE MAYFAIR DANDY
You’ve possibly seen this particular popinjay – the living embodiment of sprezzatura, with his windowpane check tailoring, tailored shirts and silk pocket squares – sauntering down Jermyn Street, picking up accessories to go with what he’s just been measured up for less than half a mile north on Savile Row, stopping to admire the statue of Regency-era dandy Beau Brummell.
Left: Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Tribute to the Tour d’Îlle in platinum featuring guilloché and Grand Feu enamel.
Right: New Patek Philippe Calatrava 6196P with its vintage look courtesy of the sleek opaline rose-gilt dial.
This character was tempted to reach for his leather-encased Coutts chequebook when Vacheron Constantin revealed, at this year’s Watches & Wonders, the latest work from the manufacture’s Métiers d’Art workshop, Les Cabinotiers: a piece whose guilloche and Grand Feu dial depicts Geneva’s landmark, the Tour de L’Île. It’s the perfect wristwear for the more flamboyant exponent of sartorial chutzpah.
Shortly afterwards, though, another piece caught his eye even more: the Patek Philippe Calatrava 6196P. The successor to the emblematic 5196, this vintage-inspired iteration of what Patek calls, justifiably, its “dress watch par excellence” has a rose-gilt opaline dial which juxtaposes – with quiet but imperious elegance – with a 38mm platinum case with flat-edge bezel, seductively tapered lugs and a diamond set into the caseband at 6 o’clock.
THE SCHOLAR
What exactly is a watch? There are as many potential answers to this seemingly straightforward question as there are fake Rolexes along the Thames Estuary. Here’s one off-kilter definition, though: a complicated timepiece is the sexiest possible expression of a set of immutable realities whose unsexiest possible expression is a blackboard full of equations.
Horology and physics are completely intertwined: passionate, if unlikely, bedfellows. And we’re not just talking oscillating components and balance wheels here, but also a watch’s core purpose – to depict the interplay between the Solar System, sidereal time and the Gregorian calendar.
Our imaginary academic, marvelling over this interplay on a daily basis during her walk from home to the Blackett Laboratory on the South Kensington campus of Imperial College, would be tempted by Urwerk’s UR-100V Lightspeed, which acts as a kind of miniature planetarium.
Left: Urwerk UR-100 Lightspeed, a cosmic-themed timepiece that displays the speed of light relative to planetary distances, and features Urwerk’s signature satellite time display.
Centre: IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar, a watch that precisely reproduces the Gregorian calendar’s complex rules, irregularities and exceptions for thousands of years to come.
Right: Breguet Tradition 7047-Tourbillon Waltz, featuring a fusée-chain tourbillon speckled with blue.
Given unwritten campus dress codes – and with the whole concept of gender-specific watches, based on size, disappearing into obsolescence – she is also well suited to IWC’s Portugieser Eternal Calendar: a piece which, thanks to its in-house 400-years gear, takes leap-year exception rules into account until the year 3000.
Any self-respecting physicist, though, marvels daily at the gravity-defying sleight-of-wrist invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet and patented in 1801, the tourbillon. The particular model featured here, the Breguet Tradition 7047-Tourbillon Waltz, has a fusée-chain tourbillon mechanism that appears sprinkled with touches of blue.
Various treatments have been used on all the components in order to achieve visual uniformity: the tourbillon carriage and the dial are covered with blue coatings, while the chain links are thermally blued. A perfect marriage of science and artistry.
THE CITY SLICKER
“The Square Mile”, “The Financial District”, “The City” – what was once the ancient Roman city of Londinium, now one of the world’s economic centres of gravity, has plenty of appellations: and, in the post-pandemic era, almost as many dress codes. Thirty years after the dress-down Friday concept gained traction, the traditional Gordon Gekko look is enjoying a resurgence but also doing battle with the smart-casual dichotomy which allows traders to trade collars for rollnecks (Steve Jobs’ world domination being a factor here), and flannel trousers which match their jackets for chinos or smart jeans.
As such, this character requires a piece that peeps as elegantly out of his Ralph Lauren denim shirt as it does his favourite worsted Savile Row three-piece. A leaning towards stealth-wealth tends to come about in these parts when trickier economic times hit, so we’re thinking that our fictional banking exec might gravitate towards versatile haute horology involving non-precious metals. Vacheron Constantin earlier this year ushered in a new iteration of its Historiques 222 in steel, an inherently dress-y piece leant casual kudos by its modest material and integrated bracelet. The Goldilocks dimensions (37mm by 7.95mm) and elegant matte dial in navy further bolster its versatility.
Left: Vacheron Constantin Historiques 222 in steel revives the iconic luxury sports watch from the 1970s.
Right: Patek Philippe Cubitus in steel with and horizontally embossed dial fiin an elegant sunburst olive green.
But – and it’s a photo finish – we’re going to instead assign to our Square Mile dandy the white gold version (he can pass it off as steel if need be) of in a more wearable of new 40mm version of the Cubitus: Patek’s first new collection in 25 years. The rounded-off quadrilateral elegance, here, is infused with a hint of sporty derring-do, whilst echoes of the Nautilus and Aquanaut lines are a sure-fire lunchtime conversation starter with horologically savvy clients.
Sartorial versatility is in abundance here, the piece’s sunburst olive green, horizontally embossed dial offering exactly the kind of understated flamboyance that is de rigueur in a district where “understated flamboyance” is no oxymoron.
THE HOXTON HIPSTER
Craft bottled water, undersized bikes, exotic street food served on first-generation iPads… Those trendier-than-thou denizens of London’s east like a quirky skew on life. They’re also unapologetically nostalgic – check out those vinyl collections and charity-shop waistcoats – and believers in making a statement at every opportunity (hence the enthusiastic approach to facial hair, and aversion to inconspicuous glasses frames).
Add to that an inherent tendency to wear their geekery on their sleeve (or in this instance just below it), and our proud resident of London’s most heavily spray-painted affluent zone is drawn automatically (pun intended) towards the minimalist, vintage-inspired aesthetic of this Hublot Classic Fusion Essential Grey: a piece which offers him the opportunity to regale fellow patrons of artisanal gluten-free cafes about the role portholes have played in watch design.
Left: Hublot Classic Fusion Original Essential Grey, featuring a rubber and fabric strap. Centre: Parmigiani Tonda PF Automatic 36 mm in rose gold with Ruby Red Grain d’Orge hand-guilloché. Right: MB&F M.A.D.2., with its raised central subdials that turntables from a DJ mixing console.
Parmigiani’s newish Tonda PF 36MM Automatic, meanwhile, pairs well with all the vintage clobber. But ultimately, our man can’t resist the MB&F M.A.D.2: a piece whose 42mm by 12.3mm stainless steel pebble-shaped case cradles a vinyl-inspired dial – a nod to designer Eric Giroud’s memories of Switzerland’s 1990s club scene.
THE PARK RANGER
Whether it’s the Gardens of Kensington, the Heath of Hampstead or the Commons of Wimbledon or Wandsworth, London’s Green Spaces are the natural habitat of an elegant breed of middle-aged women and, invariably, their four-legged friend. Often dressed in tweeds, wax jackets, wellies, and other accoutrements usually associated with more bucolic surrounds, this individual is a traditionalist when it comes to what aesthetics a timepiece, worn by her gender, should pack.
Left: Bovet Amedeo Fleurier 36mm in stainless steel with diamonds as hour markers and on the bezel.
Right: Breguet Classique Tourbillon 3358, housed in a 35mm white gold case with a slim height of 9.3mm, is set with 69 brilliant-cut diamonds.
As such, a customised Bovet Amadeo Fleurier graces her wrist in the evenings, but during these happy day-time jaunts, this character – a happily married sentimentalist – wears, with no little pride, the diamond encrusted Breguet Classique Tourubillon 3358: a sparkling, diamond-encrusted iteration of a Breguet classic, gifted by husband Tarquin on their silver wedding anniversary, and equipped with a tourbillon to counter any detrimental effects on the escapement and balance wheel of repeated stick throwing.
Author: Nick Scott
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