Worn & Wound
The 4th Watch & The Importance of the Non-Essential
It’s easy to get caught up in finding the perfect trio of watches for your ‘core collection’; the watches that cover all your bases, from mowing the lawn, to your best friend’s wedding. We have a series here called The Three Watch Collection for $5,000 in which readers attempt to do just this within a given budget. It generally goes something like this: three watches that are largely inoffensive and fit within the broadest possible range of your wardrobe, and cover you for the broadest possible range of events. They are practical, conventionally attractive, and blend in without drawing too much attention to themselves. That’s all fine and well, and I’m sure that if you’re reading this, a few of your own watches immediately come to mind as your core daily companions. But what comes next? With a good foundation in place, surely it’s only natural to explore the periphery a bit, and it is here that we discover the realm of the 4th watch. The idea of a great 4th (or 5th, 6th, and beyond?) watch is less bound by the practical constraints we place around our core watches that get the most wrist time. Whether it fits under a cuff, or clashes with your outfits, or is even all that easy to read is besides the point. The 4th watch may rarely find itself being worn (initially, at least), but it might speak to the true nature of our taste or passion in watches. These are the watches we wear purely for the joy or fun of it. That doesn’t always mean they are impractic...
