The watches I did not choose

There are watches one chooses, and others that, in a way, simply came to us. The two pieces I am going to talk about today belong to the second category. I did not track them down after long research, I did not long for them for months before taking the plunge. And yet, they are today two of the watches I treasure the most.

Both are tied to my beginnings in watchmaking in Switzerland. One comes from Longines, the other from Girard-Perregaux, the first two houses that welcomed me on this side of the border. I did not really choose these watches, at least not the way one usually does. Even so, that is precisely what makes my attachment to them so particular.

My beginnings in watchmaking

The Longines Spirit is not my first watch. It did, however, mark the start of my professional adventure in watchmaking in Switzerland. Before that, I was a lawyer in France. A profession that, little by little, had stopped making sense to me, while a passion grew alongside it: watches.

I eventually took the plunge, first by working in a shop in France, then by joining the headquarters of Longines. Girard-Perregaux came next, my second Swiss house. Two stages, two apprenticeships, and each time a watch on the wrist.

It is in fact fairly common to have a watch on loan from the brand you work for. You wear it daily, it accompanies you, it becomes a little bit yours, even if it is not yet. When the time to leave arrives, it is not unusual to have the opportunity to acquire it. That is how these two watches stayed with me.

There is, however, a detail I have not yet mentioned: I did not have complete freedom of choice. Each time, there was a framework, limits. A catalogue here, a list there. I was choosing, yes, but within boundaries I did not set.

The sensible one

The watch I chose at Longines is a Spirit in titanium, with an anthracite dial. The choice was made within the brand's catalogue, up to a certain value. A constraint, then, but a broad one: the Longines catalogue is vast, and I had plenty to work with. Faced with this relative freedom, I went towards sobriety. Three hands, the time and nothing else. No date, no complication, no show.

The titanium has much to do with it. It is a material one forgets on the wrist, light, discreet, never seeking to draw attention. This is grade 5 titanium, an alloy harder than ordinary titanium. The titanium, slightly darker and warmer than steel, pairs perfectly with the golden hands and indices. The case alternates brushed and polished surfaces, and this subtle play of finishes softens the watch's tool watch side. A tool watch nonetheless, with certain characteristics: a water resistance of 100 metres, a screw-down crown and a screw-down case back, also in titanium. The Spirit fears little. I wear it without a thought, in the rain, while washing my hands, and while bathing peacefully in Lake Neuchâtel. It is a quiet, almost psychological comfort: the certainty that it will take it all in its stride. The watch wears without one ever thinking about it, and that is precisely what I asked of it. A watch one forgets, but on which one can always rely.

The movement is a COSC certified chronometer, fitted with a silicon hairspring, impervious to magnetism, with a 72 hour power reserve, well above the average. The watch does signal it discreetly: the word "chronometer" appears on the dial, the only clue to what lies inside. Otherwise, nothing betrays this precision mechanism. It is a watch that has nothing to prove, and yet does more than it lets on.

If one had to find a flaw, it might be its very discretion: it is so understated that one could, wrongly, take it for ordinary. You have to wear it for a while, feel the lightness of the titanium, appreciate the rightness of the anthracite dial, to understand that it is not.

There is another pleasure with this Spirit. It is a watch that loves to change its clothes. Thanks to its quick change system, which releases the bracelet without a tool, it moves effortlessly from the original titanium bracelet to a leather strap, to a NATO, reinventing itself each time. One day sober and dressy, the next casual.

It is a pleasure I know well and have already written about elsewhere, both with my Oris and with my Glycine. This versatility is one of the things I prefer about the Spirit.

A small caveat, all the same. The lug width measures 21 mm, an uncommon dimension that makes finding straps a little harder. Even in this watch I find so free, so open, a small constraint managed to slip in.

The bold one

At Girard-Perregaux, the framework was altogether different. No open catalogue, but a closed list, thirty pieces at most. A list that changed little, and on which a ceramic watch rarely appeared. Suffice to say the room for manoeuvre was slim. And yet it was there, in that narrow space, that I made my boldest choice.

The watch I settled on is a Laureato 42 mm, in black ceramic: case, octagonal bezel, and integrated bracelet. Only the folding clasp is in titanium. The Laureato is a design imagined by Girard-Perregaux in the 1970s, and everything about it breathes that era: the octagonal bezel, its signature, and above all that fluid transition between case and bracelet, where one blends into the other without a break. The case adopts a tonneau shape that softens the 42 mm. Despite this uniform black, the ceramic is not monotonous: it alternates brushed and polished surfaces, so that light runs across it differently depending on the facets and the viewing angle.

The dial is in keeping. Black as well, it is adorned with the Clous de Paris pattern dear to the house: a multitude of small diamond tipped pyramids that catch the light and throw it back in flashes, lending texture to what could be nothing more than a dark surface. The applied indices and baton hands, filled with luminescent material, answer the seconds hand and its bridge shaped counterweight, another signature of the brand. Inside beats an automatic manufacture movement, the GP01800 calibre, with date and a power reserve of around fifty hours. One can admire it through the smoked sapphire case back, tinted grey to stay within the watch's visual style: perlage, Côtes de Genève, bevelling, everything is as carefully finished as it should be in fine watchmaking. But what strikes you, before any technical consideration, is the presence. This watch has a presence that few others possess.

I must admit it, though: when the time came to choose it, I hesitated. The full ceramic, that deep black, this most uncommon piece, all of it drew me in at first glance, but worried me too. I was afraid of growing tired of it. Afraid that this boldness, so seductive today, might end up weighing on me tomorrow.

This reflex, I already knew it. A few years earlier, faced with my Oris, I had had exactly the same one. I was hesitating then between two versions, one of which was a bronze variant, terribly appealing at first sight. And I had drawn back, fearing that this bold material might lack timelessness, that it would tire me in the long run. I had chosen the sensible path. A choice I have never regretted: far from tiring of it, my interest in my Oris has only grown over time.

This time, though, I did the opposite. I accepted the risk. I chose boldness, ceramic, with no regret: not only did I not grow tired of it, but it has become one of the watches I prefer. What I dreaded as a weakness turned out to be its greatest strength.

The ceramic has much to do with it. It is a remarkable material to wear: lighter than one imagines and very hard, which proves to be both a strength and a weakness. Ceramic is indeed almost impossible to scratch and practically unalterable. On the other hand, ceramic breaks on impact, unlike steel or titanium. On the wrist, its 11 mm thickness slips under a cuff with ease, and one quickly forgets that one is wearing a 42 mm watch. It is a watch full of nuance, beneath a monolithic exterior.

The paradox

Looking at these two watches side by side, one observation stands out. With the Longines, I had a wide catalogue before me, real latitude of choice. I played it safe: a sober watch, in titanium, versatile, that I can dress in a thousand ways. With the Girard-Perregaux, I had only a narrow list, and a ceramic piece that happened to be on it by chance. I dared, and rightly so.

The same reversal had played out with my Oris: free in my choice, without any constraint, I had opted for caution. Each time freedom was offered to me, I spent it on prudence. And it was when the framework tightened that I dared more.

There is something there that still partly escapes me. As if freedom, far from pushing me towards boldness, invited me to caution. And as if constraint, on the contrary, set me free. The more restricted the choice, the stronger, the more endearing, the more lasting the watch that came out of it.

In praise of limits

We often imagine that the ideal choice is born of total freedom. That the wider the range, the more fitting the decision, the more it will resemble us. My watches tell me the opposite.

Each time I had complete latitude, I chose caution, the reasonable, what was not likely to disappoint me. And each time a framework tightened around me, a ceiling, a list, a handful of options, I was pushed towards watches I might never have dared take on my own. Constraint did for me what my freedom did not dare to do.

I am not saying that caution was wrong. My Oris is proof of that, I love it as much as ever. But without those limits, I would probably never have worn black ceramic on my wrist, and I would have missed a watch that matters a great deal to me today. The limits did not deprive me of something. They gave me what I did not know I wanted.

There may be a lesson there that goes beyond watches. We spend a great deal of time wanting to widen our choices, to flee anything that restricts them. And yet it is sometimes the imposed frameworks, the ones we endure more than we decide, that lead us where we would never have thought to go. It is in fact a question I was already asking in another way in an earlier post: what if the essential thing, in this passion, were not so much what we choose to acquire?

These two watches, I did not really choose. But they are there, on my wrist, witnesses to a turning point in my life. And if I had to do it again, I think I would once more let the limits choose a little for me.