When can I wear my favourite watch?

[All over the world]

I recently purchased a beautiful blue Omega Seamaster to replace my vintage and much too fragile Rolex and I was wondering when it would be proper to wear it. Prince William who has the exact same watch (well, he has the midsize model which is a bit smaller) seems to wear it all the time, he wore it during his service, he wears it during official visits, he wears it with black tie All the time really!

I am obviously not an heir to the throne so when should I wear it? When would it be proper? On a beach? With a suit? When wearing casual clothes? I'd love to wear it all the time but while it became more and more acceptable to wear diver watches at all kind of events I am pretty sure it used to be frowned upon...?

Thank you.

[carl browne]

That watch might call for a more casual outfit, but who cares? It's beautiful and can never be wrong. Wear it everywhere and with everything until you buy a dress watch to spell it on more formal occasions. Big sporty watches are very much in style right now, anyway.

Wear it with everything but black tie--a gentleman in a dinner jacket should be focused on enjoying the evening, not the time.

Why don't you have your Rolex serviced? Something like that shouldn't live in a drawer. I have a Sea Dweller that was given to me on my 18th birthday and I have worn it almost every day for the last thirty years. I just had it overhauled at the factory and it's ready for thirty more!

C

[All over the world]

That watch might call for a more casual outfit, but who cares? It's beautiful and can never be wrong. Wear it everywhere and with everything until you buy a dress watch to spell it on more formal occasions. Big sporty watches are very much in style right now, anyway.

Wear it with everything but black tie--a gentleman in a dinner jacket should be focused on enjoying the evening, not the time.

Why don't you have your Rolex serviced? Something like that shouldn't live in a drawer. I have a Sea Dweller that was given to me on my 18th birthday and I have worn it almost every day for the last thirty years. I just had it overhauled at the factory and it's ready for thirty more!

C

My Rolex is too old to be worth servicing. Last time it was serviced it worked for one year - that is not enough for me! Also the hands are damaged, the gold is worn and the mechanism is manual winding.

[couch]

Yes, I believe it was the Bond books and films that started the vogue for wearing diver watches with business or dinner clothes. Just as from the late '60s through the '70s the presence of Rover and Toyota land cruisers on wildlife television and adventure films made them increasingly popular with suburbanites who wanted to look rugged and dashing as they went about their errands, leading to the development of SUVs as the automakers caught on.

You are right that traditionally, sport and military/adventure watches were specialty gear, and one wouldn't wear them in the city or in the evening any more than you would your tennis whites or ice crampons. I still prefer a thin, more elegant leather-strapped watch with suits. With sport coat and odd trousers, I sometimes wear the steel and gray '77 Oyster Perpetual, and sometimes the 1934 gold Asprey manual tank on a black alligator strap.

As Carl Browne says, though, things have loosened up by now, at least in the States. So long as your Seamaster isn't dramatically oversized for your wrist, it is classic enough that few people would look askance at it in most situations. If you have or plan to acquire a more restrained and dressier watch (say, for example, a PP Calatrava, below, or the Cartier Tank you mention in another thread) for serious client meetings, evening cultural events or fine dining, and so on, then it will be easy enough for you to find your own "crossover point" at which one feels more appropriate than the other. And CB is certainly correct about dinner clothes and full dress: skip the watch altogether.

[All over the world]

Right, so wear the watch all the time except for Black or White Tie events then. Got it.

I decided to get the blue SMP even though I knew it was a little less dressy than the black version because everyone has a black face watch nowadays, I thought, blue is more original but yet classic enough.