I purchased a watch three years ago that I’ve started describing as being approximately the size of a flattened hockey puck. Not to exaggerate. Forty five millimeters across, cheese-thick enough that it snagged on every cuff in my drawer, and I wore that thing all winter before admitting to myself I was constantly checking the time by rotating my whole forearm like I was checking magnetic north. Ask nice, one of my eighth graders did. “Is it a smart watch?” It wasn’t a smart watch. It was a normal watch that had decided halfway through development to abandon all reason.
It had me thinking about this because hats off if you’ve noticed this trend and not been thrown down the well of contemplation about it. Watches used to be small.
Reasonably sized things that lived close to your skin, thin watches that you could easily forget you were wearing. Nowadays stroll through any department store watch department and you’ll see what happened. You’ll see watches with faces the size of that hockey puck’s cousin, thick as a notebook, heavy enough that you can feel it when you shake someone’s hand. Where did this come from? Who decided that was the future of watch design? No one asks those questions. It just sort of crept up on us over the last twenty years and became the default instead of the outlier.
THE ACTUAL REASONS IF YOU DIG PAST ALL THE MARKETING FUN
Well some of it comes from tool watches. Watch designed for specific purposes like diving or flying or both in the mid twentieth century needed to be easily readable in any number of bad situations, underwater, in a cockpit, anywhere something small and easily skimmed really wasn’t cutting it for the person wearing it. Those watches earned their beefy look. A larger dial meant you could quickly and easily read the time instead of peering at it. There’s a legitimate functional reason for that size upgrade. It wasn’t merely a style choice presented as something more. But I think somewhere along the line watch makers realized this kind of looked awesome, that a beefy diver’s watch popped in photos and felt solid on your wrist in a way a thin dress watch didn’t, and they ran with that aesthetic long after the original utility went away. You can buy watches now advertised as being able to withstand pressures you’ll never dream of recreating, designed to look like professional tools for jobs their owners will never hold.
Same goes for how phones completely eliminated the reason watches needed to be easily readable in the first place. You don’t need a watch on your wrist to know what time it is anymore. When all phones do that job already your watch isn’t competing in terms of basic legibility anymore so it starts competing in terms of presence. A big bulky case looks more expensive. It looks more serious. It feels less like you accidentally grabbed the first thing you found on your dresser and more like an intentional purchase. I’d argue that’s the fundamental shift. Watches went from being tools to being personal statements, and guess what else gets bigger the more it’s a statement of wealth? Trucks and televisions and portion sizes at restaurants. When size stops being a factor of utility and starts being a status symbol mankind always finds a way to enlarge it till everyone hates it but nobody does anything about it.
Also worth considering is there’s a very literal reason watches simply became larger. Watch movements became more complicated. You want chronographs and subdials and date windows and hell, why not a moon phase? All of that needs space. Trying to cram those features into a slim vintage style case is really difficult. It’s an engineering challenge that a lot of brands just opted not to attempt. Much easier to enlarge the case than to shrink the movement inside it. Nobody plotted this in some back room. That’s just a lot easier and once enough watches do it you bang out a watch that fits the modern standard no one questions it.
WHERE I’VE LANDED ON ALL THIS, WRIST GAME INCLUDED
Alright so here’s the thing that actually irritates me about this trend. Bear with me if you think this is going someplace awesome. It’s not, I hate wearing watches when it’s thirtyfive degrees outside. Hate it. Why? Not for any reason that’s clever or interesting, because of Minnesota winters. Thick watch, thick winter coat sleeve, now my watch doesn’t fit under my cuff at all which means either throwing it on top of my coat sleeve like some kind of weapon mounted to the outside of my arm
Or not wearing it at all during the months of January and February. Tell me again why I need a watch if I can’t wear it half the year? I did this awhile back. My daily was this absurdly large Canfield that waslemieux and I lived in Minnesota for a few months. It was fine until we actually hit arctic temperatures, you know when the high is twelve degrees but feels like twelve degrees? This watch would not fit under three layers and sit on my forearm. Eventually I gave up and let it live in a drawer from November through March. If your watch can’t make it through a Minnesota winter it’s, in my opinion, failed it’s one job.
So I downsized. Went back to something that’s just over 38 millimeters. Thin enough to wear under a sleeve. Lightweight enough that by noon I forget it’s even on. It doesn’t photograph well. Trust me. I’ve put it next to some of my larger watches and nobody’s going to compliment you on the watch you picked if it easily disappears between your cuff and your wrist.
Doesn’t feel as hefty when you’re checking the time either. But it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It simply does the job a watch should be doing, telling you the time without making a fuss about it.
Look I don’t have any delusions that watches are getting small again. Anyone that tells you otherwise is selling you something. I will say I think people get too much joy out of something being “serious” because it costs more money or is oversized. Bigger isn’t always better, or more high quality, or more stylish. Sometimes a big watch is just a big watch that you can’t wear when it’s freaking twentyfive degrees out. Indoors my watchstrap turns into a forearm flag that eighth graders will diligently inform you about.
Gareth teaches in Leeds and dresses for four proper seasons, including the sideways rain. He writes about practical clothes, weatherproofing that actually works, and coats he’s put through a full Yorkshire winter.
