Vacheron Constantin Watches

What is a watch? It’s a timekeeping device, primarily. Perhaps this statement is obvious to you, perhaps you think it’s something that doesn’t need clarifying—but yet when a watch can cost £250 or a quarter of a million, the obvious no longer seems quite so obvious. How can two watches that both quite simply tell the time have such a disparity in their prices?

When Audemars Piguet released the Royal Oak in 1972, everyone thought the watchmaker had gone mad. The watch was big, it was basic and it was expensive—and it sold by the bucket load. Patek Philippe got in on the action four years later with the Nautilus, and not wanting to be left out, Vacheron Constantin joined the club a year later, completing the 70s trifecta of steel sports watches from the top three. Today, such a watch will set you back from £17,000 and as much as £23,000—but is there something we’re missing that’s just as good for half the price?

The dress watch is perhaps the hardest watch to master. It has to be simple, it has to be manual wind, it has to have no complications—small seconds at a push—and it has to be small, both in diameter, but more importantly, thickness. This leaves very little for a watchmaker to hide behind, only the quality of the watchmaking itself left to do the talking. How do the very best brands in the world do it?

Sometimes answers are so obvious it’s barely worth asking the questions. If you want a sporty two-plus-two, for example, that handles like a racer yet will happily sit in a Monday morning queue, you get a 911. Or, if you want a 3-hander that’s both rugged and elegant, you get a DateJust. It’s practically written in the stars, but yet—sometimes what seems to be the right answer isn’t always the best answer. That’s why cars like the McLaren 540C, Aston Martin Vantage and Audi R8 exist, and it’s why the watches you’re about to see exist as well.