Classic Dress Watches
Classic doesn’t have to mean old fashioned—just timeless. A number of new watch designs recall venerable style while staying up to date with modern attitudes and technology.
In 2023, Rolex surprised watch enthusiasts with the 1908 dress watch, named for the year the brand was registered. The 39-mm design pays homage to the original Oyster Perpetual watches of 1931 with a sleek, round silhouette. The dial has a small seconds display at 6 o’clock and stylized Arabic numerals at 3, 9 and 12 paired with faceted hour markers, echoing the hands: sword-shaped for minutes and Breguet-style for hours.
Still, the 1908 feels fresh and modern, even more so with this year’s supple, yellow-gold bracelet dubbed Settimo (seventh in Italian, to reference its seven small links). The all-gold version is priced at $35,900. Furthermore, the automatic Calibre 7140 adds movement innovations, including a Syloxi hairspring, Chronergy escapement and Paraflex shock absorbers. The result is a guaranteed power reserve of about 66 hours, chronometric performance of -2/+2 seconds per day and water resistance down to 50 meters (165 feet).
Classic needn’t mean round. Contemporary rectangular cases trace back to the Deco era when geometric designs reigned. A gold bracelet brings a fresh look to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Deco-era Reverso with this year’s Tribute Monoface Small Seconds ($41,300) pairing a finely grained rose-gold dial with a matching Milanese mesh bracelet, a style popularized in the mid-20th century. The hand-wound, in-house Calibre 822 delivers 42 hours of power reserve.
Reverso’s unique swiveling case was conceived in 1931 for polo. Players could flip the case over to protect the crystal while riding and flip it back after. The solid case back can be left blank or embellished with engraving or lacquer decorations.
Cartier’s Tank à Guichets dates back to 1928, the height of the Moderne movement. Guichet is French for ticket window, a nod to the apertures through which hours and minutes are displayed in a quick-reading digital format via a mechanical jump hour movement. The latest Tank à Guichets (price upon request) are powered by the new, hand-wound 9755 MC movement with jumping hours and dragging minutes. As with the original design, the unlimited versions (in yellow gold, rose gold and platinum) position the hour aperture at 12 o’clock and the minutes aperture at 6 o’clock with the winding crown at 12 o’clock.
