/fa/ - Fashion

bamp.

>why do they cost more?
It's harder to make.
>why is that justifiable?
Because some people want them. We don't have to justify what we want. No bullshitin' bro.
WHY YOU PAY SO MUCH FOR GOLD ITS JUST A ROCK

>>6452981
Oh, and you shouldn't buy that watch, it's ugly.

>>6453003
of course it's ugly. It's solar powered and atomic. IE, a good work watch. The best looking out of a pile of turds. Would you prefer this one?

>>6453006
If you want a fantastically functional watch, get this and save yourself some money. If it's good enough for al quaeda it's good enough for you.

/fa/ approved, bro.

>>6453031
Meh, I prefer the analog function. Plus, there's no solar or atomic there.

> scratch on the face
> 2585
> not having scratch resistant glass
shig dig m8

- you thought, "well, I could be an au pair," and you did the legwork, and you asked for it, and you got it.

>>6452981
>why automatic watches cost so much more than quartz

It's complicated (no pun intended), but it's a mix of simply having more moving parts, brand shit, Swiss labor rates, etc. etc.

>how that price is justifiable, since they don't keep time as accurately as quartz?

This is even more complicated, but a few things to note, in ascending order of how much mind you should pay them:

- Obviously, for a lot of people, automatic watches are a symbol of wealth and status. You're some hot shit finance douche with a signing bonus that's put you in the 1% by itself and you cop a 50mm Rolex. So it goes.

- If you're into traditional presentations of masculinity, along with his wedding ring, a wristwatch is "a man's only jewelry." It has to be nice. Things built by hand with lots of little tiny beautiful parts are generally nicer than things built by robots.

- This is new and recent; it wouldn't have really been true even ten years ago, but it's important.

Watches are an affectation now, unless you work in a few fields where you actually need the time on your wrist. (Medicine, for instance, taking pulses.) You have perfect time from an atomic-over-IP mechanism beamed to your telephone 24-7 from metal towers in the sky*. Quartz is primitive in comparison. How are watches justifiable, since they don't keep time as accurately as your phone, since you don't need one at all?

>>6453231

They're jewelry, on one basic level, yeah, but they're a specific kind that evokes certain things, that (of course) literally deals with time itself, the very most basic form of our experience. They inherently signify a certain relation to time*. There's a fuckton going on with wearing a watch, any watch or any given watch, and I'm tired and don't really feel like unpacking it in detail tonight, but consider this: wearing a watch in an era when they are obsolete for real precision timekeeping inherently means you're slopping up the time some. Taking a more relaxed approach to it, oddly enough.

You can't humanly tell that at all, though, with a quartz. So in this weird new world, the advanced, simple quartz watch is effectively trying and failing at being what a watch is now. The sloppy mechanical, more anachronistic, from an even slower time, before satellite news, before ARPANET, when humanity's highest summit was a slow trek up Everest and not a blast to the moon, is better at being what a watch is today.

>>6453235

This is all kind of cool stuff generally, but on top of that it circles back around to the watch as a status symbol. You've heard the talk about how being *dis*connected, being able to get away from the world created by rich guys with fax machines and brick phones, is the new luxury?

Think about Jay-Z establishing his wealth and status, the invulnerability money has brought him, by bragging about his "Rollies that don't tick-tock / Audemars that losing time."

And remember Shoshanna gushing "you're so fucking classy" when Jessa told her she wasn't on Facebook? Take it one step further: what about not having a phone?

I was on a bus in a rich area maybe three or four weeks ago, and a very well dressed woman with that kind of slick, removed nonchalance got on; she would've been memorable for her fit and manner alone. She was wearing a wristwatch, and I noticed her actually checking it. A few minutes later, she had an iPod classic out in her hand. The logical conclusion (or mine, anyway) was that she doesn't carry a phone.

I'm tired as hell and probably not getting all that across as well as I could, but you should get the idea.

Also note you can cop excellent Russian, Chinese, etc. mechanical watches for less than some nice quartzes.

* Worth noting: your phone probably has no moving parts beyond the button(s), the speaker driver and whatever you call the corresponding part in a microphone. It may have a motor to focus its camera lens, if yours isn't fixed focus.

** The easiest way I can think of to demonstrate this is to point to Rolexes. The GMT Master, designed for pilots and at one point in history actual technical equipment, a true 24 hour watch that'll track multiple time zones. The Submariner, with the big seconds labels on the dial, time measured out in the second order of minuteness, which divers need for some reason.

>>6453263
I actually have a dumbphone, so I am trying to keep it simple. And actually, a quartz has moving parts, just not nearly as many. But one part moves several thousand times per second.

>>6453289
Right, but less moving parts than an automatic and more than a telephone.

Main point being, it's not the gold standard for utilitarian timekeeping anymore, and it's not evocative enough of a slower pace of life to really mean something. The extra mechanical complexity is just something cool to look at and ponder.

Your dumbphone gets time the same way a smartphone does.

Watches are the only jewelry that I find acceptable for men which is why I have this

>>6453305
Wedding rings are unacceptable?

>>6453308
Let me rephrase that, watches are the only jewelry that can be complex. A simple gold band is acceptable as a ring

>>6453289
> But one part moves several thousand times per second.

And hey, if you find this cool (it is, in its own way; I never thought about that) run with it.

I actually just have the F-91w and a Mondaine quartz, for the design, but sometime soon I'm copping a 24 hour Raketa. Almost certainly this model. Russian, mechanical, 36mm, go for less than $100 on eBay, and the only thing I'd change is giving them the second hand off the Mondaine.

>>6453295
Yeah, I just hate having to dig through my pockets or holster (I wear it during work for reasons obvious reasons; I am a power plant electrician, and often crouched down) to get the time. Much easier to have it on the wrist. I get the argument you are making, but, as someone who /does/ use their watch for accurate time keeping (again, due to work), I guess I prefer the utilitarian quartz, especially with the solar, which extends the life of it up to 20 years, vs sending in an automatic every 5, and dropping several hundred dollars to get it taken care of while it is off in Switzerland for 5 weeks.

>>6453314
I wear a simple black tungsten. I think it looks acceptable.

>>6453320
Oh, yeah, it's definitely easier. I'm just sort of talking out this idea I had at some point about what's behind the deep romantic appeal mechanical watches have to people.

>>6453330
oh, ok. It's just a romanticism? Not a practicality thing? I was wondering if there was something I was just not getting, aside from a mechanical being able to survive an EMP.

>>6453031
I wear one occasionally, but damn the strap's weak. Had mine less than a year and I need to look for a new strap

>>6453314
>implying my MIT class ring isn't acceptable