Marshall Hyman writes about fashion in the Wall Street Journal
Last year, Karim Rahma, a 36-year-old comedian and entrepreneur from Brooklyn, decided he was fed up with his G-Shock Casio watch. “Well, I don’t look like an adult,” he remembers thinking to himself when he saw his image in the mirror with the clock made famous by his clumsy appearance.
Not long after, at the Macy’s department store, he saw a small silver Seiko watch, with a square face, only an inch and a half from side to side, and as thin as a bracelet. “I asked the saleswoman, ‘Is this a men’s or women’s watch?’ And she answered, ‘both,'” Rahma recalled. He was convinced. “I liked the look of the watch on my wrist.”
He quickly upgraded his status to a man with a small watch: inspired by photos from the 1980s of Lou Reed and Jerry Seinfeld wearing the Cartier Santos, a small watch in gold and silver, he bought one too.
“It looks cool compared to my big hands – less like a watch, more like a piece of jewelry.” And besides, he found his little watches comfortable and not oppressive. “Big watches get caught in things, and are not suitable for clothes.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrPf7oQWBTU
The celebrities who wear small watches
According to Nick Marino, VP of content at watch website Hodinky, many men are buying small watches. They are replacing watches with a diameter of 41 mm or more – which was acceptable for men for a long time – with watches with a diameter of less than 39 mm. Many of the watches are unisex models or those designed for women. Some are really tiny, like Karim Rahma’s Seiko or the 23mm wide Cartier “Crash” watch that is a favorite of rapper and music producer Tyler the Creator.
Since the early 2000s, “large, macho, attention-grabbing watches were in fashion. Now there’s a return to smaller sizes,” says Nick Marino. A small watch is “a sign of self-confidence: you don’t need a huge advertisement of wealth on your arm,” he says.
Paul Boutros, head of the watch department at the Phillips retailer in America, agrees with Marino. The large watches that have been dominant in recent decades are like “a red Ferrari on the wrist. They are meant to project, ‘I’m a man of watches, look what watch I have.’ People are tired of that.”
The actor Timothy Shalam was recently spotted with a small watch from the Swiss “Jagger La Cultura” house. Rapper Bud Bunny appeared on the cover of GQ magazine wearing a women’s watch. It is so small that you hardly notice it. But not only young stars are downsizing. At this year’s Super Bowl, Jay-Z, 52, wore a 37mm Patek Philippe watch. Modest, if not really small. “Jay-Z surprised a lot of watch collectors,” Boutros says.
The elegance that small watches radiate
The transition to small watches can be seen as a continuation of the adoption of fashion that is not unambiguous in terms of gender in men, says Yoni Ben Yehuda, manager of the Material Good store in New York. Small watches have a refined, bracelet-like elegance that large watches lack, adds Los Angeles stylist Jared Ang.
Given that small watches were all the rage in the 1970s and 1990s, the renewed interest in fashion from those decades has given more motivation to switch to small watches, says Breen Wallner, founder of the New York-based watch website Dimepiece.
Whatever the reasons, the little watches can help men look less ridiculous. “Most men are not the actor Dwayne Johnson,” Wallner said, referring to the large actor. “It seems silly for a man with a small wrist to wear a huge watch.”
How do you choose small watches?
Rahma, the musician, agrees. Sometimes someone wearing a huge watch – the kind worn by NASA astronauts or professional divers – asks him, “Why are you wearing your grandmother’s watch?” Rahma’s answer is: “You fly to the moon after dinner?”.
And for those who want to start wearing small watches: first look at your proportions: your body, clothes, wrist, watch – make sure everything is balanced, says Jared Ang. A 36mm model is often a good starting point, Marino says.
Size is relative. Chris Salgado, founder of the New York-based skincare brand Atwater, has always liked huge 46mm watches. “I thought to myself, I’m a big man, I need a big watch,” says Salgado. But a few weeks ago, he fell in love with a black Chanel J12 watch , a 38mm watch marketed primarily to women and is “much smaller” than any watch he’s worn before.
“In my head it didn’t work,” says Salgado, 55. “But then I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘I like this.'”