Yahoo Movies The Wear Everywhere Watch for Less Than £160
Spend enough time looking at watches, and you'll quickly turn full magpie. And reader: I have spent a many, many hours of my working adult life looking at grand watches. Perhaps a majority of it. Before walking these fine halls at Esquire, I was the point man for watches at another (sadly now defunct) menswear title. Before that, the in-house typing monkey for a watch retailer: the sort that refers to its customers as 'clients', and one where a fluency in Russian, Mandarin or Arabic was essential for sales assistants on comical commission rates.
Unsurprising, then, that I became a magpie after staring at classics in stainless steel on subtle leather straps for days on end. It was the big brands that I wanted, those watches filled with diamonds and yellow gold and impossibly heavy bracelets that feel all luxurious and Corleone by very token of the added weight. These watches cost. A lot, actually. They've also clouded my vision, and it took the latest instalment of a long-standing Timex collaboration to bring my bias into the cold light of day.
Designed in conjunction with Nigel Cabourn, a storied vintage reworker in London's Covent Garden, the collab is one of several sold out crossovers between the two. For good reason. It's the sort of workwear-y inspired, olde worlde thing that doesn't try too hard. No discontinued shopfront font. No painfully inauthentic 'distressing'. Instead, the collab (duly named the Naval Officers Watch) takes its cue from the watches worn during the Arctic convoys of World War 2. The dial is detailed, but clear – very important when trying to tell the time under a sky of Luftwaffe fire – with just enough character to separate it from the countless other military watches that have long been retired from trenches. At 12 o'clock sits the skeleton of a three-pronged pyramid, and to the centre, 24 hour PM indices in bold ruby red. It's the finer details that make for a handsome watch.
The most attractive prospect though is the price. Timex x Nigel Cabourn's real military-grade throwback clocks in at a mere £159: a small amount in the grand scheme of watches, and an even smaller amount when you'll likely wear it every single day. You can't say the same for a gold-gilded arm cannon, as wonderful as they are. For now, the magpie has flown the nest.
Available at timex.co.uk now, priced £159
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