THE JOURNAL

Our style experts answer your most pressing sartorial questions.
Today, we’re doing the fashion equivalent of killing two birds with one stone. Well, when it comes to this humble style advice column, anyhow. Because, after appealing for queries about watches, and getting an overwhelming response, we have decided to deal with two of your questions in one.
Is gold too dressy to wear on your wrist every day? When is a leather strap appropriate and when should one wear a steel one? Find out what our US Editor has to say on the matter(s), below.
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_Can a gold watch be your daily wearer or should it be reserved as a more occasional piece? @texaspete84, via Instagram _
Leather strap or steel strap? @crushikesh, via Instagram
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Yes and yes. I wear my gold watch with a suit at the office, with jeans and a T-shirt, at barbecues and business lunches – and never feel too flashy or too formal. My watch is… my watch: a slim 1952 Omega automatic (which looks not entirely unlike this Montblanc: minimalist on the dial, a teeny crown, rounded, solid frame) that my grandfather gave to my dad when junior graduated high school, and which my pops gave to me when I went to college, with all the engraving to boot. It is my every day, my all day, outside of the gym and the shower, obvs – solid, with a touch of the sentimental to which I am admittedly susceptible when it comes to things like watches.
For years, I wore this watch with gator bands, croc bands… I loved the contrast of rich, mahogany, almost crimson leather bands (when new or even as they developed patina-unto-destruction). But, these days, I have it on a gold-plated stainless steel elastic band – which, for some reason, I have convinced myself it would have been sold with when it was new. I dig the tonal symmetry of the all-over gold effect, which somehow makes it more discreet, and probably less dressy, than it felt on the leather band. Not that I’m trying to hide, exactly. My watch is my watch, and I’m happy for it to be noticed, or not. Like everything else, it has a story, but doesn’t depend on its telling. One thing I do notice, though, is that, because it has a nicely time-brûléed white metal face, the watch seems to play well with white shirts, though that may just be rationalising a pre-existing taste.
Similarly, to my eye, my skin tone, which, depending on the season is somewhere between rosé and bourbon, just happens to play better with gold than, say, silver. Which isn’t to say I don’t creep all over our watch pages looking at metal watches in all their variety. But – and here’s a personality test type of thing – as much as I love, say, divers, when I think about dream watches, my head will always go toward dress watches, fantasising about Jaeger-LeCoultre Masters, IWC Portofinos and Zenith Power Reserves, in particular – all of which have that sort of lean, clean style I like – on my wrist and in my wardrobe. But that’s just me.