The Spice of Life

The cycles of watch love

I’v long resisted calling myself a watch collector, and recently wrote stories about both living with one watch, and watching all my watches go up in smoke (except one). But then a funny thing happened: I started wearing more of my watches lately. It got me thinking about the fickle and promiscuous nature of horological love. 

When I returned from my month in Sri Lanka, during which I really only wore two watches for most of the time, I unfurled my watch roll and started rediscovering some pieces I’d almost forgotten I had. It’s as if I was craving variety on my wrist after looking at the same watch for a long time. For starters, I wound up and set my 1969 Doxa T.Graph, the watch I said is the one I’d want on my wrist when I run out of our burning house. I’ve waxed on about that one enough, so I’ll say no more about it here other than, even if I am not actively wearing it, I like to keep its hand-wound movement topped off, if only so that when I do decide to put it on, I don’t have to get carpal tunnel syndrome setting the “semi-quickset” date.

After about a week straight with the Doxa, I donned my 1985 Citizen Aqualand, a watch for which I have a deep and undying love. I put it on a thick shell cordovan strap, which oddly fits well on this semi-retired old diver (me and the watch)—rugged and capable but largely high and dry these days. I’ve said it before, but my tastes run to watches that encourage fidgeting and have ample visual diversity. The Aqualand has both in spades. Aside from the obvious depth sensor widget and related functions, it’s just fun to sync the sweep analog seconds hand with the digital time display, play with the stopwatch, and spin the grippy, knurled bezel.

The Citizen is a blast, but the depth sensor makes for an odd and obviously bad fit with terrestrial life, so I moved on to my Aquastar Deepstar for a couple of days. This was my watch of the summer back in 2020. Despite the pandemic-induced travel anxiety that year, I managed to take it diving twice in the Great Lakes and wore it almost daily for that whole summer. Its steel engraved bezel bears the scratches of those adventures and carries some good memories. Interestingly, these three watches—the Doxa, the Aqualand, and the Deepstar—sort of lay out a visual, tangible timeline of where dive watch technology and problem solving was in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The bezels on the Aquastar and Doxa attempt to make it easy for a diver to plan both decompression an no-decompression dives, while the Aqualand was a huge leap forward with its dual display and dynamic depth sensing capability. As a diver, I appreciate seeing that progression.

Speaking of Doxa, I’ve sort of rediscovered the brand in general lately. My love of these very specific and quirky dive watches had laid dormant for close to two years. Part of that was due to my scaled back diving ambitions, and partly due to the company’s new corporate direction, but every time I would see a photo of one or catch a glimpse of one of mine in the watch roll, I’d get a small pang. Lately I’ve pulled out a couple more of mine, specifically the so-called “Black Lung” trio produced to commemorate Doxa’s early relationship with the Aqua Lung dive gear brand. I fitted a bracelet to the orange dial Professional (my least favorite version, actually) and wore it on a sunny day, channeling Stan Waterman’s louche style. But right now, I have on my favorite, the more sober Sharkhunter black dial, on a striped NATO strap. I wore this watch diving in both the Caribbean and the Maldives several years ago and it oozes those memories.

For a couple of cool days in mid-May, I wore a watch that may surprise you: the anOrdain Model 1. Aside from a jewel-like Grand Seiko I hardly ever wear, this might be the watch least likely to be seen on my wrist. But upon deeper reflection, it’s not. Scotland-based anOrdain is known for its in-house enamel dial artistry, a craft I’ll admit I never paid more than a passing interest in. But then the dial typeface is inspired by the font used on old Ordnance topographical maps of the Scottish highlands, which hints, at least to me, that this might be less a “dress” watch and more a throwback “gentleman’s” watch, the one that, back in the day, a chap would wear for anything and everything, from checking the oil in his Land Rover to a brisk walk through the moors on a misty morning. It’s the kind of watch you might find in grandpa’s drawer or at an antique shop in a small country town somewhere in the British Isles. I moved the watch off of its goatskin strap and fitted it on a dark grey nylon one, which still suits the cream dial, but lends it more versatility.

For more general service, my go to is the Tornek-Rayville TR-660, a watch I wore for a couple of days in Sri Lanka and remains that piece I like to wear when I don’t want to think about my watch but still gain pleasure on a time check. Its relatively small footprint, matte case and no-date dial, as well as the practical and eminently satisfying rotating bezel make it an ideal daily wear choice for a lot of gardening, basement cleaning, hiking, and anything else I’m getting up to in summer.

There have been others too—a Unimatic for a day, the Omega regatta timer, then my vintage Aquastar Benthos, and a CWC. Long story short: I’ve fallen off my “one watch” wagon. The funny thing is, I haven’t touched my “Arctic Bond” Seamaster I wore almost nonstop since September, right to the other side of the globe in April. I can’t really say why. Burnout? The seven-month itch? Who knows. For now, it spins lazily on a winder, still keeping excellent time.

What the past six weeks have taught me is that I’m glad I have a collection of watches, not because I like to parade my pieces at meetups or show off my taste on Instagram. But because watches are a source of small scale, private pleasure on a day to day basis. They complement clothes, they inspire and enhance different activities, and they simply feel heavy and functional, well made in a world dominated by obsolete tech and a whole lot of plastic. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, be it hiking in the woods or in line at the grocery store, I can gain a few seconds of satisfaction glancing at my wrist. And to have the variety of an orange dial, a leather strap, a chronograph to start, or a bezel to spin brings me a squirt of joy every time I do it.

In my early days of watch appreciation, I didn’t have the wisdom or the maturity to recognize that not every watch needs to be my “one” watch. So I approached each acquisition with this stubborn criteria in mind that every one of them needs to be able to dive deep, climb high, and elegantly slip under a sleeve at the end of the day. Every watch could be the only one. That led to a lot of buying, selling, and trading, to satisfy this Quixotic quest. But then I’d find something a watch didn’t do well, or see another that appealed to me that I wanted to try, so the cycle went on and on. Now I am not saying I need more than one watch or couldn’t live with just one. I’ve proven that I can. And I’m not actively out there seeking to build my collection further. But since I have a few, I’ve come around to just enjoying each of them in turn, sometimes for an hour, for a day, or even just to wind one up and put it away again. I guess that makes me… a collector. May God have mercy on my soul.