Men judge other men by their watches. So what does a €160,000 time-piece say about its wearer, asks Kate Holmquist.
When a woman buys a watch she tends to go for bling. A Cartier with plenty of diamonds usually does the trick, even if it's a quartz watch with nothing interesting going on inside.
Men - especially those who collect watches - are interested in the design of a watch, but are just as fascinated by what goes on inside it. The Swiss mechanical watch with any number of "complications" - such as chronograph, moon phases, power reserve and water resistance up to 300 metres - has become the ultimate status symbol for men, just as handbags and big rocks are for women.
Men who love and collect watches usually notice other men's watches. "At business meetings, one man will notice another's watch and they'll talk about it. What features does it have? Where did he get it? It's not a come-on for one man to compliment another on his watch. I suppose you could say that watches are men's diamonds," says Paul Sheeran, a jeweller and watchmaker whose "watch room" in the Westbury Mall, off Grafton Street, Dublin, is full of desirable timepieces.
"Men appreciate the fact that watch-making is a 200-year-old mechanical art that expresses the ultimate in human ingenuity. They like to know what's going on behind a watch-face, even if they can't see it. They're interested in the craftsmanship involved - Swiss mechanical watches can have 500 individual pieces or more," Sheeran adds.
PAUL BROUGHAN, WATCH buyer at Weirs on Grafton Street, says people are turning away from obvious "bling watches" such as the glittery Jacobs worn by David Beckham, and choosing well-made mechanical watches by companies such as Patek Philippe, which look understated despite their prices, which start at €9,000 for an 18 carat gold watch with an alligator strap and reach €160,000. The Rolex mechanical watches (€17,300 in yellow gold) are still popular and are "good everyday, 24/7 watches", says Broughan, but now that Irish people are travelling so often, they've become acquainted with names such as Vacheron-Constantin, which start at €7,500 and can cost more than €1 million. "They used to say you judge a man by his shoes. These days people say you judge a man by his watch," he adds.
Simon Stokes, owner of Bang Café, Baggott Street, Dublin and the Clarendon Bar, has two watches. "A watch is like a piece of jewellery for guys. It says a lot about your personality," he says. He owns a silver Tag Heuer "Monza" automatic chronograph chronometer accurate to within 1/10th of a second, designed in the 1920s with a distinctive cushion-style case typical of the period. His twin brother, Christian, has a Monaco (€3,425) - the famous Tag Heuer worn by Steve McQueen in the film Le Mans.
Stokes's second watch is an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, silver with a leather strap - "very understated and casual". Women don't notice his watch, but men who are into watches aren't shy about saying something like "that's a phenomenal watch", Stokes says.
He is already planning to give his Monaco to his eldest son Lucas (four) and will buy himself a watch to hand on eventually to his second son, Caspar (two). Stokes says: "I think it will be a Patek Phillipe. I love their magazine ad: 'You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation'."
Sheeran says that men who want a "life watch" that will become an heirloom rarely windowshop. They are almost always planning to buy the moment they set foot in the showroom. "Men learn about watches by word of mouth, guys talking about them with each other. Or they read How to Spend It in the Financial Times." With high-quality Swiss watches costing anything from €700 to €12,000 on average, and up to €8 million tops, buying a watch is a serious purchase. Yet men don't take much time over it, apparently. Stokes says: "It's show me the watches, yes, no, get in and get out. You have a gut feeling when a watch is right."
Michael Ingle, a qualified horologist (as a watch-maker is known), now works with Illy, "training people to make good coffee". He owns a Tag Heuer kirium chronometer (€2,663) an Ebel (a gift) and a Zenith El Primero in 18 carat gold and stainless steel (about €6,000). "The El Primero is a beautiful watch. Zenith were the first people to have an automatic chronograph and it has an oscillating weight that winds the main spring with the movement of the wrist, so you don't have to wind it." He explains that a sapphire crystal glass cover on a watch sets it apart. Sapphire is harder even than diamonds, so doesn't scratch. Part of what makes a watch collectable is the detail on the face, combined with the accuracy of the inner workings.
Spending 50,000 on a Zenith or a Franck Muller is not unusual in the watch world, although few men are willing to go public about their favourite possession. "John", who works in IT marketing, was given a €15,000 IWC (International Watch Company) Pilot for his 40th birthday, but doesn't want the world to know it. He says: "It feels nice and heavy on the wrist. It's a gorgeous watch and while it's an extravagant amount of money, I feel it's worth it. I'll hand the Pilot down to my son. I plan to buy a few more watches, too."
JAMES - A BUSINESSMAN with a collection of 20 watches, each worth about €6,000 to €40,000 - didn't want his real name used in this article, but was willing to talk about his fascination for horology. A collector for the past 25 years, he tends to buy a new watch when a special model he admires becomes available. His favourite is a Patek Philippe with a complicated movement that he bought 12 years ago. It shows date, time, month and moonphase due to a sophisticated mechanical movement so finely calibrated that it never loses time.
"It's very discreet, not at all bling," he says. He also owns a rose gold Jaeger-Le Coultre and a limited edition AM-VOX Jaeger-Le Coultre, which was made in connection with Aston Martin, the car manufacturer. His watches are all wound by the movement of the wrist while they are being worn, so to keep them all running he stores them in a watch cabinet which has watch-holders that rotate to imitate the movement of a human wrist.
"What people perceive as special watches are not," James says. "Rolex, Cartier and Gucci are not the highest standard of watch-making." James's maddest watch is a Franck Muller that tells "crazy time": none of the numbers on the watch dial are in the right place. Muller, another Swiss watch-maker, calls himself "the Master of Complications" because his watches display increasingly bizarre qualities that Muller invents merely to show that it's possible. One of his watches, the Las Vegas (€23,875 at Paul Sheeran Jewellers), has a roulette wheel incorporated into the dial, while another, Aeternitas, has a perpetual 1,000-year calendar so that there is no need to readjust it to take account of leap-years.
Muller is one of a new breed of young Swiss watch-makers who have re-launched Swiss mechanical watch-making. It almost died out as a result of the introduction of quartz watches in the 1980s. These days, a quartz watch may be convenient, but true watch-addicts want big, heavy watches packed with infinitesimal mechanical parts that are either self-winding, or wound daily by the user. Celebrities sell watches, just as they do handbags. Tag Heuer uses Brad Pitt, Uma Thurman, Tiger Woods, Steve McQueen and Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan as ambassadors for its watches in magazine ads and brochures.
IN A RECENT supplement to Vanity Fair magazine, Diane Kruger wore a Chanel J12 Tourbillon, Joely Richardson wore a white Girard-Perregaux gold Cat's Eye and Matthew Modine wore an IWC Big Pilot, a design introduced for fighter pilots in the 1940s.
Sheeran, who has a Pilot and a Monaco in his personal collection, was introduced to watch-making by his father, a bank manager. He was enrolled in a watch-making course in the VEC in Stillorgan, which was run in cooperation with the Swiss Institute of Watchmakers. "I loved working with my hands, learning to use a 10X eye-glass, even though Herr Golee would make us get down on our knees to look for the tiniest screw if we lost one," he says. The school closed a few years ago at just the time, ironically, when mechanical watches began their comeback. Today, watch-makers and repairers are in such high demand that a watch sent to Switzerland can take four or five months to repair.
The romance of watches resurrected from early 20th century designs seems to appeal most to men. The Zenith El Primero (€6,000) is classic and funky in a masculine, unadorned way, but one version has a heart-shaped window on the clock-face complete with a tiny beating heart - enabling the successful man about town to wear his heart on his sleeve.
