Wearing a watch is one of those fashion pursuits that has something of an ineffable quality to it. When you secure the watch to your wrist, you feel smarter – more elevated, even. This feeling is worth investing in, and worth learning more about; after all, watches don’t exist in a vacuum. What do you need to know about watches, and how to choose your next one?
How to choose your watch
If you’re new to wearing a watch, you might feel a bit in-the-dark about what you should be looking for. After all, there are so many different types of watch, and so many different styles even within those different types. Even these styles are split into two camps, on account of the internal engineering that make them tick – and sometimes literally.
Quartz watches are battery powered, with a carefully-machined piece of quartz used for timing; these ones literally tick. Automatic watches utilise the movement of your hand for power, are smoother, are more complicatedly-engineered and are more expensive to boot.
Further, different designs of watch reflect different use cases. There are five distinct types, but the most common are dive watches, dress watches and chronograph watches – the former and latter of which are named for the specific tools they include alongside the time-telling part itself. You might choose a watch for its practicality – dive watches being useful for diving, chronographs being useful for racing – but they can also be worn casually. At this point, the question may be how busy you’d like your wrist to look.
What to do with surplus watches
Getting into watches as a fashion statement will, naturally, lead to you building a fairly significant collection of watches to match different styles and occasions. On this journey, and particularly in the earlier stages of your watch-wearing experimentation, you’re bound to have a few watch-related blunders here and there.
You might find you have some watches you simply didn’t click with, that are now gathering dust in the corner of your wardrobe; you might find, as your taste develops and to your horror, that some of your regular-rotation watches have been doing you a complete disservice. Whatever you find, there are plenty of used watch resellers to which you can go with your unused collections – thus freeing up more money for you to invest in yet more of the right kinds of watch.
How to make your watch fit
Getting the right strap for your wrist isn’t rocket science; you can simply measure the circumference of your wrist, and ensure you have a couple centimetres’ play for versatility. Your watch’s fit isn’t all about sizing the strap, though.
It is also vital that you consider the size of the watch’s face. You can change a strap for length or width, but you cannot change the size of your wrist – and some watches are quite simply not made for certain wrist sizes. This is more obvious on smaller wrists wearing bigger watches, but also tracks for those with larger wrists trying to make tiny faces work. Play to your strengths!