There are various instances when stran­gers come up to us, unknown and unannounced. People stop us as we’re taking our legs for a walk to ask us for directions, because they are lost, or because they think we are a long-lost friend from primary school.

Of course, it all depends on where we are. If a stranger comes up to you in Nairobi, Kenya, you will be lucky to avoid getting stabbed in the neck. And if you get accosted in a dark alley in San Pedro Sula, Honduras (what exactly are you doing there?), well, good luck and, maybe, see you.

But in most cases, people stop us to ask for the time. Of course, it could be an excuse to chat us up. But that is an exception – the rule is that people want to know what the time is. Because not knowing what time it is means that our agenda will look like a nursery floor after a class of three-year-olds have had their way with a set of alphabet letters.

And yet, watches aren’t just about telling time. They are, first of all, a fashion statement – the style of watches that we wear is dictated by the fashion trends of the time. Size, strap and function all depend on what you’re wearing, especially for men, for whom a watch is the main accessory that they wear.

Even the development of watches was influenced by the catwalk. It is said that men started wearing pocket watches when Charles II of England introduced waistcoats, while women continued to wear pendant watches well into the 20th century.

Watches’ fashion credentials find proof in the fact that, if watches were only worn as an indicator of time, we wouldn’t wear them at all – after all, we can tell the time just by looking at our mobile phone.

Functionality is also an important consideration and has always played a primary role in horology. Before wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches, either carried in a pocket or attached to a watch fob. Wristwatches were available: however, these were mostly worn by women and were considered to be a passing fad. But then, legend has it that during World War I, soldiers were finding pocket watches to be highly impractical and started attaching their watches to their wrist using a leather strap.

Even the development of watches was influenced by the catwalk

Just like Formula 1 technology is carried over to production cars, so does watch technology developed for a specific purpose influence the watches we wear. In 1960, the US Navy’s experimental bathyscaphe, the Trieste, descended into the Mariana Trench, the deepest known depression on the Earth’s surface. The two men inside the Trieste, Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, had accomplished an incredible feat which raised the bar for deep ocean exploration. What was also incredible was that, emerging from a record depth of 10,916 metres, the Rolex Deep Sea Special prototype attached to the outside of the bathyscaphe was still in perfect working order.

Another historic event that influenced watch development was Buzz Aldrin’s walk on the moon. When the American astronaut landed on the moon in 1969, he was wearing a mechanically powered Omega Speedmaster, which survived the ultimate test in durability and resistance. Yet the Speedmaster wasn’t the first watch into space. That honour belonged to Yuri Gagarin’s Pobeda Shturmanskie, which was the watch traditionally issued to the Orenberg Flight School graduates. Other watch brands followed into space, including the Breitling Navitimer Aurora 7, Tag Heuer Stop Watch Friendship 7 and Rolex GMT Master Apollo XIII.

Watches are also an investment. Timepieces have always been considered to be highly collectible items, with rare and precious watches attracting astronomical bids at auctions. The Henry Graves supercomplication by Patek Philippe originally cost its owner around 60,000 Swiss Francs in 1933. When it was auctioned at Sotheby’s in December 1999, it sold for a record €8.15 million.

Wise investment? Definitely. But then, watches always are.

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