Issue 191: Is The Pilot's Watch Dead?
At the very least, I think it is falling without a parachute. Here's why...
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that this week has its head in the clouds but its feet on the ground. It has been a while since I took an opinionated stance and really ran with it. Felt gooooood. Really looking forward to hearing what you think of this one.
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Cabin crew, all hands ready for landing
It has taken me a while to have this epiphany, but I think the concept of a pilot’s watch is in big trouble. All the gauges are spinning round, the altimeter is descending rapidly, red lights are flashing and at least two people in the cockpit are searching for the solitary parachute.
Before we go any further I need to make it clear: I am not expressing my surprise that people who buy pilot’s watches aren’t real pilots. That would be stating the bloody obvious; dive watches rarely get wet, chronographs are used for timing steaks and eggs if you’re lucky… we all know that luxury tool watches stopped being real tools a long time ago and that even though they are mostly still built well enough that you could use them for their theoretical purpose, they are the expression of an idea, a fashion statement for people who pretend not to understand fashion. I know this, you know this, I will not waste your time with anything so obvious.
My point is that even the idea of a pilot’s watch is fading into irrelevance. Traditionally when you engage with a modern tool watch, you do so with some level of recognition that although you, a regional manager for a perfectly successful retail conglomerate, will not literally go diving with your Submariner, you have nevertheless probably understood that this is a 300m rated device, that it engages with a proud history of dive watches, and perhaps you are vaguely aware that its appearance and design have been informed by greater physical demands than the Monday morning team meeting1.
At this point some of you might be up in arms. Maybe you love aviation in all its forms, go to air shows, enjoy plane-spotting, model-making and military history or just think fighters jets look freaking cool. Don’t worry. I love a lot of that stuff too. But you can’t just sell pilot’s watches to plane geeks. I’m talking about the mainstream presence of a major genre of watches and how they are expected to resonate with people who don’t know a Typhoon from a Tornado - and actually, I think if you are an aviation super-geek, you’ll probably have already reached the conclusion that I have, which is that the concept of a pilot’s watch today is about as relevant as Spitfires and Hurricanes are to modern warfare.
Specifically, I feel like recent developments from some of the biggest names in aviation watchmaking show that the threads connecting the watches with the concept of flight are wearing very thin indeed. I would contend that we have reached a point where it is practically impossible to sell a collection of watches based on aviation links, and even more far-fetched to call yourself an aviation watch brand.
You are probably not convinced. There are a great many pilot-themed watches in the market, many of which are celebrated stars of the horological firmament. I am not saying they have ceased to be appealing to customers - prima facie that is not the case, although I am saying that the way they appeal to customers these days has precious little to do with flight - and nor am I suggesting that they have somehow ceased to be good designs. There is more than one aviation archetype in watchmaking, and the best ones have survived because they are clean, purposeful designs, but in this case, design without meaning behind it is nothing. Pilot’s watches depend on their backstory to give meaning to the design, and while I’m not suggesting history is being erased, I do think it is being smudged into the background. I think there is a good chance we are diluting and corrupting the idea of a pilot’s watch to such an extent that this meaningful connection is being stripped away. It is the actions of brands, on one side, and bigger changes in society on another, that lead me to say that the pilot’s watch is, if not dead, then at serious risk of crash-landing.
Let me lay out my case.
