Which watch? And why? - irony of the inability of luxury wristwatches to keep the right time, made worse by their ugly designs

National Review, May 30, 1994 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

AWHILE AGO, as I perused the wristwatch ads in the New York Times, something within me agitated--something that once in a decade, or maybe a lifetime, causes you to wonder about what you do measured comprehensively; like, oh, What percentage of your lifetime do you spend asleep? Or eating? Or--your mind, when roguish, will take you to antic lengths--defecating?

It happened to me at that moment, on the spot. I asked myself, How many hours (weeks? months?) of my life have I already spent looking at watch ads? The question fascinated me in part because my persistent habit hasn't been motivated by any search for the Perfect Watch. This is so because quite by accident, a few years ago, I discovered the perfect watch; so that all the time I spend looking at the displays of watches for sale is entirely platonic. It's just that there is something, for me, simply irresistible in watch ads.

I thought this an entirely personal idiosyncrasy until I devoted a newspaper column to a single Sunday's watch ads. I was astonished by the number of people who wrote to me, or told me to my face, that they suffer from the same addiction. "Suffer" may be the wrong word, because manifestly our fraternity relishes the pastime. Granted, some voyeurs are engaged in the practical pursuit of a watch preferable to the watch they wear, but they would presumably expect that their curiosity would be extinguished upon finding their quarry.

Now, all watch-watchers are given to examining primarily two basic things. The first, of course, is the appearance of the watch; the second, its price. I found that my correspondents share with me the stupefaction provoked by manifest paradoxes--the very expensive watch that appears mundane in appearance, modest in its accomplishments; and, on the other hand, the preposterously inexpensive watch that appears to accomplish as much as models costing one hundred times as much.

The mind wanders ... What are watch-fanciers looking for? By what criteria are they guided? How much of the whole business is sheer guile? Or flighty, evanescent fashion-chasing? Some watch-buyers, of course, are conned, but that is true in every situation. But how many of us? Like 9 per cent? Or more like 90 per cent? What is the force of the guiding hand of fashion?

I had in my mail, reacting to my column, a wonderfully querulous letter from William Manchester, the learned, stylish, peppery historian and biographer. He wrote from his fastness at Wesleyan University. I quote from memory: "I wear a Rolex, but have decided to get rid of it because it is Politically Correct. Please let me know what is the watch you are so pleased with. Yours, Bill Manchester, Eurocentrist, Heterosexual." I decided to pursue more meticulously the questions I had posed in my column.

The front section of the New York Times on that Sunday carried ads for forty watches, leading off with a Van Cleef & Arpels selection, two elegantly plain watches, the primary visual difference between them being that one had a sweep second hand, the other a miniature second hand. "Gentlemen's Quartz Leather Strap Watches. On left with steel, $1,500, and on right with 18 kt. gold, $4,950."

Now that's the kind of thing that causes the gnashing of teeth among us watch-watchers, because of course you ask yourself: How much gold do you consume to make up the $3,450 difference between Model A, non-gold, and Model B, gold? It is a happy coincidence that you recall that an ounce of gold sells for $345, more or less; so that, at the raw gold price, it would take ten ounces of gold to account for that price differential. Come on! I doubt the whole watch weighs more than ten ounces. Those bloodsuckers, huh!

Your eye catches, a few pages ahead, a Mickey Mouse watch. You smile. Walt Disney lives! The eternal benefactor of little children, with their heady little appetites for sprightly, inexpensive, utilitarian adornments! You read on and come upon--stumble over--get floored by--the price. $5,750. Your eye races to the explanation. Could it be that inside each of these watches there is a relic? Maybe a toenail of the original Mickey Mouse? But all the reader gets is: "A $5,750 Mickey--for innovators, watch collectors, and friends of Mickey. Completely hand-crafted in Switzerland." Very close friends of Mickey, one has to assume.

Ah, yes, and we come to: "hand-crafted." You are a grownup reader and so you know that "hand-crafted" usually means, very simply: more expensive. You have idly wondered, over the years, why customers should want "hand-crafted" goods. If it's a painting by van Gogh, you most certainly wish it to be hand-crafted. But what is it, you allow yourself to wonder, that makes a hand-crafted watch preferable to a machine-crafted watch? Isn't it likelier that a hand-crafted watch will err, than that a computer-crafted watch will do so? And if that is the case, aren't you being asked to pay a lot more money for a watch that is likelier to contain an imperfection, probably invisible to the eye of the craftsman, that the computer-laser would detect?