Our Favorite Watch And Formalwear Pairings (And The Characters Who Wear Them)

Season’s greetings and a warm welcome back to In Good Company: a regular column in which Randy, Team Wristcheck’s resident lifestyle correspondent, waxes lyrical about the connection between some of our favourite timepieces and other broader ‘gentlemanly’ pursuits.

This time, we’re turning our attention to formalwear: that most flattering style of men’s clothing, which invariably gets a lot of airtime from December onwards and right through the Lunar New Year. Of course, watches are part and parcel of this conversation: even if - in the words of beloved GQ columnist Glenn O’Brien - they’re not exactly crucial accessories for your festive revelry. His rationale? “You shouldn’t care what time it is.” 

By and large, that’s a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly. Yet, for a good number of watch folk - and as a reader of Wristcheck, I assume you count yourself among us - the drive to don a timepiece during CNY has almost nothing to do with accurate time-telling.Rather, we embrace the aesthetic and emotional qualities that a judiciously selected watch can add to any festive ensemble: no matter whether you’re a stringent advocate of dinner jackets or passionate fashion lover who’s always up to interrogate the limits of formal dress codes.

In that spirit, we’ve taken a more irreverent approach than usual to this year’s first  edition of In Good Company, wherein we imagine five stylish male ‘archetypes’ and the watches best befitting their personalities. Do any of these characters seem less than fictional to you? Read on to find out…

A man who knows his mid-century modern almost as well as the ‘perfect’ Martini recipe, you’re bound to cross paths with the ‘Classicist’ on numerous occasions during the festive season - so long as the event invitation reads “black tie required”. After all, this fellow is a devoted believer in the wisdom of tradition - and he wouldn’t be caught dead in business suiting (or worse still, casualwear) at the height of the silly season. 

He wears his impeccably tailored dinner suit with a certain languid disaffection (do a shot everytime he refers to it as his “uniform”) and, after one too many French 75s, can be found reclining in the fumoir - probably boring his fellow revelers to death with a monologue about “the history of ready-to-wear clothing at Brioni”. 

For such a man, who measures the success of any festive blowout in number of bow ties untied and magnums of Pol Roger poured, the Calatrava is one of the few watches he’ll deign to put on his wrist. More particularly, the Ref. 5026G: in part because it slips under his (French) cuff; in part, because of the classic Breguet design codes; and not least of all, because of its elegant subtlety - the quality that classicists prize most when dressing up for black tie season. 

Known to both his friends and adversaries as “Mr. Hollywood”, the Pleasure Seeker’s tastes in formalwear might as well form the lyrics of a particularly lively Rick Ross verse. In the universe of this alpha type male (the rest of us are just living in it) nothing succeeds like excess - which is why when he steps out of the transfer car and into the venue, he all but demands your full attention.

For the Pleasure Seeker, every holiday shindig is an opportunity to go ‘full runway’: a mindset that will be bleedingly obvious once you see him decked out in glittering statement jackets from designers like Dries Van Noten and Gucci. Such an individual - so often at the epicentre of every holiday mixer - requires a timepiece that can stand up to his larger than life personality.

That requirement ought to put MB&F firmly in his crosshairs. The award-winning indie watchmaker is many things, but shy about innovation it most certainly isn’t. Their ‘Legacy Machine’ 101, made with technical expertise from H. Moser, is one of the few designs capable of co-starring alongside floral print jackets and viscose tuxedos - especially in this rather holly jolly shade of ‘cosmic’ green. 

Much like Mr. Hollywood himself, the LM101’s whimsical architecture isn’t for everybody, but for those who subscribe to the aphorism about “[knowing] thyself” it’s an expression of watchmaking that is, unequivocally, in a league all its own - and that is something worth celebrating. 

While his distant cousins (i.e. the Pleasure Seeker and Classicist) favour formalwear that is at least vaguely rooted in sartorial tradition, the Minimalist is the kind of man to take your fusty old dinner suit apart and poke at its superfluity. And no, I’m not just speaking metaphorically.

His enthusiasm for things designed with an unflinching fitness of purpose - think the Barbican Centre or old Lancia Deltas - means he favours clothes which often have more in common with architecture. So, when it’s time to ‘dress up’ for the holidays, why should that ethos be any different?
Open the Minimalist’s holiday wardrobe and you’re bound to find a dozen ‘variations’ of the same billowy Lemaire shirt: the kind that, infuriatingly, he’ll be wearing to this year’s NYE festivities - complete with Bottega Veneta clogs and huge trousers from some Japanese designer you’ve (probably) never heard of.

However, what you might be au fait with is his wristwatch: Cartier’s Santos ‘Noctambule’, living up to its nickname (and his perpetually inscrutable demeanour) through a combination of ADLC case material and some seriously cyberpunk openworking. Shorn of numbers, primary colour and all but the faintest of branding - it only betrays its irreverent and hard-partying personality once the lights go out and the lume comes on. Sorta like this guy.

Adept at holding court in English, Canto, Mandarin and probably even that European language you failed so spectacularly to learn via Duolingo, the Native Son never misses an opportunity around holiday time to rub his impressive cultural bona fides in an assembled party’s face.

Naturally, he often chooses to accessorize his erudite, jet-setting ways with the appropriate (yet never fetishist) kind of national dress - be it tangzhuang, jeogori or even an eye-wateringly lavish dressing gown that he keeps “for the occasional low-key dinner party”. As you do. 
 

For such Native Sons, ‘home’ is so often a nebulous concept - consisting of summers spent in KL and winters tackling the Grand Couloir run, so it makes sense so many of them would favour ‘travel watches’. Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas Dual Time is one of our favourite examples in this popular category: supplementing the essential ‘true’ GMT function with a glossy black dial and movement bearing the Geneva Seal. And just for good measure: a daytime/nighttime indicator - so you don’t inadvertently bai leen ahead of schedule.

On the subject of formalwear: where the Classicist sees rules to be followed, the Rake perceives the opportunity for impish transgression. A close relative of the dinner suit wearing, Calatrava collecting gentleman; the Rake is an archetype whose mastery over the tenets of black tie dressing have ultimately left him a bit bored - you’re more likely to glimpse him in one of The Armoury’s smoking jackets and Loro Piana slippers. Turns out, you can dress elegantly without skimping on comfort.
 
Similarly, that same knack for bending the laws of custom extends to the Rake’s love of watches. To be sure: like most mortal men, he has a soft spot for 5-digit Royal Oaks and old Rolex chronographs, but when it comes to the matter of personal collecting - the Rake is always happy to take a punt on designs that the majority might dismiss, misunderstand or otherwise shy away from. 

Playing to the tune of vintage Piaget and Cartier, this Canapé (long since discontinued by Audemars Piguet) leans into the excesses of watch design during the Nineties and late Eighties. Named for its resemblance to the armrest of a particularly fancy sofa, the Canapé sheds light on AP’s lesser known heritage in the production of avant-garde shape watches: encapsulated in details such as the ‘violin scroll’ lugs and Art Deco dial furnishing. Perfect for the man who delights in going against the grain, albeit in the subtlest of ways.