Issue 143: 10 Things I Hate About Watches
And five things that have improved in the last 15 years
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that hasn’t had five hours to spare to listen to Acquired’s Rolex run-through. Is it as good as everyone’s saying it is? I’ve got deadlines lining up like the multiplying brooms in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. That is the first sign of spring for a writer, so I shouldn’t complain - but I’m also trying my darnedest to have something to shout about when TFW hits 150 in - Christ! - seven weeks’ time.
This week, I was inspired by the newly revitalised and opinionated Ben Clymer1 (and the couple of readers who responded to last week’s mention of gripes) to write my own list of pet hates. With one eye on my 2025 manta to not be consistently negative, I’ve also worked very, very hard and come up with five things that I think have got better in my time in this world. Let me know what you think - and please share your own!
Lastly, thank you to everyone who contributed to the conversation after last week’s dissection of the Morgan Stanley/LuxeConsult report. Just goes to show how starved for solid facts we are that a body of work that may well be inaccurate (more on that, if I can pull it together, in weeks to come) still yields such debate. There were some great points made, and if you haven’t yet taken the plunge into the Substack chat, why not step inside? It’s a safe space (are we still saying that?) and I really enjoy hearing from you all.
Enough preamble. Enjoy this week’s issue!
Chris
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
In Brief
A few snippets from around the web
In the latest update to our ‘what the hell is really going on’ line of enquiry, I urge you to read (you may need Google translate, if you don’t speak French) this story interviewing a leader from one of Switzerland’s main trade unions, Unia. It talks about the employment practices currently being used by watch companies to save money. Did you know that Swatch Group is asking workers to accept reduced hours, on the same pay, on the basis that at some point in the future they’ll have to work overtime to make up for it? By manipulating their workforce’s hours in this way they can run leaner without having to declare RHT (the Swiss term for reduced working hours, or furlough schemes). They can only do this for up to 75 hours’ worth of accrued time ‘debt’ per person, however, so it’s a pretty short-term solution. Unia says it is interceding in numerous cases between the big groups (it cites Swatch Group and Richemont) and their employees.
Another valuable - and worrying - rumour reached my ears this week, from a source I trust: apparently Sellita is running a three-day week. According to a 2022 Monochrome article, Sellita makes 1.5m movements a year. This downturn just got serious.
I’m enjoying the tit-for-tat sniping on watch nerd Instagram over whose perpetual calendar setting system might be superior. (A more niche argument it might be hard to find). The Kurt Klaus stans are out in force, trying to burst Audemars Piguet’s bubble as it marked its 150th anniversary with the launch of a new perpetual calendar that’s fully adjustable from the crown, backwards and forwards (apart from, it seems, the week indicator, which is a daft function to include in the first place if you ask me). Greubel Forsey chipped in with a snarky Instagram post; when GF is slamming you for not having a sufficiently legible display, you really are taking fire. Meanwhile, in a quiet room somewhere, Stephen McDonnell is presumably just smiling to himself.
I’m a week late to this, but I really like the Timex New Yorker centenary special edition. What journalist wouldn’t? I know plenty of watch specialist media have put their names to limited editions but there was something much cooler about seeing a true giant of publishing commemorated in this way. I’d love to see some other big name magazines follow suit. Time, of course, is the obvious one…
Ten Things I Hate About Watches
Hate is a strong word, but I couldn’t resist the reference to a fine Shakespearean homage. As I mentioned, this is inspired by Ben Clymer’s list of five gripes last week, and gripe is the perfect word. This list is not going to be another rant about major, entrenched institutional failings like transparency or representation; I care very much about those ideas, but I feel like a gripe should be a small, annoying and ideally easily fixable complaint.
These are things that baffle me, that I personally would do away with by executive order if I had the power2 but that are predominantly subjective. You will have your own personal peeves, and I would love you to share them below.
Inaccurate and misleading descriptions
Okay, this is kind of a big topic - but it is easily fixable3. Ben Clymer called out two moderately high-profile examples (chronometers that aren’t certified, and movements that are given a new rotor and an in-house sounding name when they’re really Sellita or similar) and I had so many more I had to bundle them together under this umbrella gripe. One that regular readers know I’ve been exercised by in the past is faux-guilloché; another real bugbear is ‘manufacture’ for a movement that’s been supplied by a third party. (In-house…well, in somebody’s house). Hand-made is another, or ‘made in wherever’ when ‘made’ means final assembly, or maybe just bringing together the watch head and bracelet. We all have our own examples to bring to the table - and you can add the more specific instances of economic truthfulness around brand histories and so on. Perezcope has done great work bringing the likes of Panerai and Blancpain under scrutiny, and I feel like the worst (or clumsiest) instances of historical revisionism might be behind us, but I still wouldn’t say that the industry as a whole has been weaned off its addiction to exaggeration and embellishment.
Price on Application
Telling the luxury industry not to be pretentious is like telling clouds not to rain, and I know some people will argue that you need to retain some mystique in this world. But I find this little phrase to be smug and unnecessary. No-one has to broadcast their prices if they don’t want to, and if you’re making a one-off ultra complication, I don’t mind if that number stays between the maker and the buyer. But what grinds my gears is that a lot of brands hide behind ‘POA’ when what they’ve made isn’t, in the context of haute horlogerie, as expensive as some of its competitors. Sometimes I think people use it when they want you to think something’s actually more expensive than it really is, and that’s a kind of false modesty in which I have no interest. Lastly, as a journalist, it’s impossible to assess and appraise your latest creation without a price; what might be highly impressive at £100,000 could be a total rip-off at £250,000, and make all the difference to my opinion4.
Overcharging for straps
Some straps are cheaper than others; if you’ve invested in engineering your way around a patented quick-change mechanism to be able to sell third-party Santos straps (hi Delugs!) then I can understand paying a premium, and of course good quality leather is always going to cost money, but rubber straps in particular are super cheap and some brands take eye-watering liberties with the markup.
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