In this edition The Cultivated Wrist, we’re busting out our Sunday’s best and looking at dress watches. What makes a great dress watch? The right dimensions for one thing, a dress watch should have no issues slipping under a cuff without calling attention to itself. That usually means manually wound watches without giant bezels and crown guards. These watches are generally light on complications as well, save for a date window or power reserve here and there. Below find a selection of options that we’d recommend across a range of price points.
Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Q1282510
A modern take on simplicity from the manufacture Jaeger-leCoultre. The Master Ultra Thin is, well, ultra thin at just 7.4mm thick. Equally impressive is the fact that they’ve stuffed their 899/1 caliber, which is an automatic, inside. We love the eggshell dial with gilt hour markers and dauphine hands. The inclusion of a date window at 6 o’clock adds a bit of practicality without disrupting the clean aesthetic. It’s a beautiful take on a classic dress watch and there’s currently an Ask of $10,500 on this example.
IWC Portuguese Hand Wound IW510204
They don’t make em like this anymore. Really, this is a discontinued model from IWC and you won’t find a cleaner example in the current Portuguese collection. This breaks the rules a bit, measuring in at 43mm it’ll grab a little more attention on your wrist. As a reward, you’ll get a full 8 days of power reserve out of this manually wound caliber 59215. We love the small seconds at 6 o’clock but could do without the date window at 3 o’clock. There’s a current Ask listed at $12,620 for this example.
Vacheron Constantin Patrimony 81180/000G-9117
The Patrimony is a design straight out of the 50s, and they haven’t aged a bit. The 81180 seen here is manually wound thanks to the svelte caliber 1400 beating inside, which also means the watch is a mere 6.8mm thick. No date windows or other clutter anywhere in sight. Just a simple, clean dial with applied hour markers and Vacheron signage at 12 o’clock. Doesn’t get much better than this. There’s an Ask of $13,240 on this example at the moment.
Zenith Captain Central Seconds 03.2020.670/01.C498
Like what you’re seeing but don’t have $10k to drop? Here’s a great option for under $3k. The Zenith Captain offers many of the same design sensibilities as the brands further upstream, though perhaps not quite as clean as the others, for a fraction of the price. So what are the trade offs? Well, at 9mm thick, it’s not as ultra-thin as some of the others, but it does get you an automatic Zenith caliber 670 that even includes a date complication. We could do without the outline around the aperture, but hey, you can’t win em all. There’s an Ask listed at just $2,840 on this one.
