Hi guys, it is always a pleasure to write to you guys all the time.
Today i will be writing on wristwatches and why it should be part of your
fashion style.
HISTORY OF WRISTWATCHES .
While the wristwatch has become a men’s style staple
around the world, up until the late 19th century it was considered a piece
of jewelry exclusively for women. Men preferred the pocket watch. This wasn’t
some arbitrary fashion decision based on taste or gender; there was actually a
practical reason for men’s preference for one over the other.
Before the 20th century, watches were
extremely susceptible to the elements. Moisture, cold, heat, and dust could
easily bungle the intricate gears and springs within a watch, causing it to
lose its accuracy. As men were more likely to face these elements, and held
positions in the military, business, and government that made accurate
timekeeping more of a paramount concern for them than for women, care had to be
taken to protect their timepieces and keep themselves on schedule. Function
superseded fashion, so into the pocket men’s watches went, only to be taken out
when needed.
As with most things in men’s style, it would
take a war for patterns to change and for the watch to leave a man’s pocket and
be placed on his wrist.
Pocket watches required a free hand to use —
you had to reach into your pocket and hold it while you checked the time. In
the tumult of battle, a man needed all the hands he could get. So soldiers
began improvising wristwatches by strapping their pocket watches on their arm
with leather.
The first instances of the use of these improvised wristwatches are said to have occurred among British soldiers fighting in the Burma and Boer Wars in the late 19th century. Called “wristlets,” these leather straps had a cup to hold their pocket watch. By the 1890s, a few companies started manufacturing leather wristlets for soldiers and even made improvements to them, like adding a compass on the strap for navigation. They were often marketed as “Campaign” or “Service” watches.
Just as GIs returning from WWII continued to wear their
government issued tees and khakis as civilians,
veterans of the Burma and Boer Wars likely continued using their leather
wristlets when they returned home. Male civilians, seeing these rough and
tumble war vets sporting what was once considered a lady’s accouterment, began
following suit.
Seeing that men — particularly soldiers — were wearing
their pocket watches on their wrists, several companies in the late
19th century began creating watches specifically designed for that
purpose. Girard-Perregaux was the first company to mass-produce wristwatches
specifically for men — particularly for sailors in the German Imperial Navy.
The Waterbury Clock Company — now known as Timex — also began selling a men’s
wristwatch at around the same time. In 1907, jeweler Louis Cartier designed a
wristwatch for his Brazilian aviator friend, Alberto Santos-Dumont, which he
called the Santos.
While these manufactures were pioneering a new segment of
timepieces, sales weren’t that great. The majority of men still preferred the
pocket watch, or the leather pocket watch wristlet.
It would take another war for the watches to find a permanent place on men’s wrists.
It would take another war for the watches to find a permanent place on men’s wrists.
World War I ushered in modern, mechanistic warfare, and
the wristwatch played a vital role in this process. Before WWI, the
coordination and execution of orders relied primarily on visual cues — soldiers
would often use semaphore signals to communicate with one another. But because
battlefronts were so large during WWI and because soldiers fought in trenches,
this visual mode of coordination became increasingly unviable. So clocks began
to be used to coordinate attacks: officers would sync watches together at a
meeting, return to their respective troops, and initiate the offensive at the
agreed upon time.
To do this, many British officers continued to use the
improvised wristwatch — their pocket watch tethered to a leather strap. But
some began wearing a bona fide wristwatch designed to withstand the rigors of
warfare, while maintaining a classy, aristocratic look. Watch companies in
England immediately began capitalizing on this new need by making and marketing
wristwatches specifically for officers serving in the trenches. They called it,
unsurprisingly, the “trench watch.” (The trenches of WWI is also where the “trench coat” was developed.)
The
trench watch wasn’t a government-issued piece of equipment (the pocket watch
was still the officially sanctioned timepiece), so if an officer wanted one, he
was expected to supply his own. Because there wasn’t a single watch company
providing watches to the military, this opened up a vibrant and robust market
with several competing companies making trench watches for officers.
Consequently, you can still find a wide variety of trench watches from this era on eBay and various
other auction sites as well as antique stores.
This wartime competition spurred innovation in the men’s
wristwatch. Watch hands and numerals donned luminous paint to make time reading
easier in darkened conditions (like at night or in the trenches), and
unbreakable crystal glass replaced the glass covering the watch’s face. Lugs
for attaching the leather strap to the watch started to be built right into the
watch, which gave it a more finished look. Porcelain dials to set the time,
which were common on pocket watches, were replaced with metal. Finally, the
watch casings were made much tighter to keep water and dust out of the watch’s
sensitive mechanisms.
Like the veterans of the Burma and Boer wars who returned
home to civilian life burnishing their leather wristlets, British vets of WWI
came back home wearing their trench watches, thus setting a standard for
civilian men to follow. By 1930, more wristwatches than pocket watches were
being sold in the U.K.
The adoption
of male wristwatches took hold a little more slowly in the U.S., though. Many
American doughboys wore the wristwatch while in the trenches, but went back to
the pocket watch after returning home because of the wristwatch’s lingering reputation
as a “lady’s timepiece.” The only way an American man could get away with
wearing a wristwatch as a civilian was if he was taking part in rugged activity
that required chronological precision like flying or racing. It wasn’t until
the mid-1920s that wristwatch sales among men began to gain ground, and much
later than that that they finally overtook pocket watches.
After WWI solidified the masculine bona fides of the
wristwatch, manufacturers began creating timepieces to be worn on all sorts of
occasions. Yes, there were fancy dress watches, but most wristwatch innovation
was driven by specific needs of men serving in the military and taking part in
risky and dangerous activities like car racing and aerial barnstorming.
WHY WEAR A WATCH?
Few men these days need to time the start of a
battlefield attack, and technology has come a long way since the Battle of the
Somme. We’ve now entered an age where a man can check the time by pressing a
button on his smartphone, which begs an obvious question: “Are there still any
reasons to wear a watch?”
1.
Watches Are Convenient…
Phones don’t
keep you punctual. Watches do. A wrist watch is the most convenient way to tell
the time.
2.
Watches Are Functional…
Any item
inspired by the military has a functional use. Wrist watches included.
3.
Watches Provide Simplicity…
