HappyStroller wrote:. . . . Tourbilllons still don't get my attention because they lack the simpler look that a decent thin dress watch should have.
I'll agree with that.
However, on most formal occasions, at least if they are social ones (I may exclude public balls and certainly coronations and presidential inaugurations!), a gentleman really should try to avoid wearing a watch. As we discussed in the Lounge a few years ago, wearing a watch clearly implies an interest in knowing what the time is, which in itself connotes impatience with the course of the evening (or morning or afternoon) that one's host has so carefully planned and is so hopefully conducting: a disregard, then, for the feelings of the host and of one's fellow guests.
But a wrist- or pocket-watch for such public balls and gubernatorial inaugurations might be another matter, and such a watch should indeed be simple. A now long-dead great-uncle, the picture of Brahmin aristocracy, once faulted me (with a grace rooted in the nineteenth century) for wearing a "busy" watch: the PP on my wrist had a
second hand, in addition to telling the hour and minute!