While I purchased my holy grail watch back in 2020, it took awhile to get to the point where I felt comfortable with making such purchase. My watch journey essentially stopped where it started, during my teenage years, save for a major upgrade in brand, completing a full circle.
I started wearing a watch in high school. I purposefully selected a two-toned piece, DKNY-licensed procured from my local Fossil outlet. The white gold and yellow gold ensured that I could wear the watch with any of my jewelry, as rose gold (and those godawful rose gold Michael Kors watches) was still nearly a decade away its 2010s fever pitch. Despite the fact that phones as timepieces had not yet taken foothold yet, my watch was less of a tool to tell time and more of an accessory.
During the mid-aughts while I was working at The Buckle, I inadvertently started collecting Guess and Neves watches. While the metal chain link Guess watches were a sign of the Christian Audigier / Ed Hardy times of which I ultimately came to regret, the latter brand was especially fantastic; Neves produced watches on leather cuffs for men and repurposed silk ties from women. It was very much a cult brand and not one that many people in my community wore. I had this very watch and still stand by my decision to sport it:
There was a rumor that Neves watches came from the same company as 7 for All Mankind denim, as seven spelled backwards is “Neves.” That generation of watches served as timepieces; I was working in retail at the time and phones were most certainly not welcome on the sales floor. A watch ensured I would have the time mid-stack of shirt folding.
With 2010 came a purge of all signs of the aughts and my purchase of my Timex Weekender via J.Crew and the subsequent color straps that I used to coordinate or contrast with any given outfit. The option to swap out the candy colors is what sold me on the watch. I went on to wear that Timex for a solid decade, as evidenced by many a blog post including but certainly not limited to the following:
With the interchangeable straps, I used my Timex as more of an accessory, rather than a timepiece per above. During this phase, I leaned on my phone to get the time.
My watch journey eventually came to its forever conclusion when I re-discovered the dual toned watch. Twenty years after that initial DKNY model, a yellow gold and steel medium-size Cartier Tank Française proved to be the last watch I ever purchased for myself. I had my eye on it prior to giving birth to my first born though I still bought myself a prepartum push present of a Louis Vuitton Ebene Damier canvas Keepall to serve as my hospital bag. However as I was on hour three of pushing, I thought that the Keepall was not enough and what my body was going through in that moment merited the Cartier Tank Française. As we left the hospital as a family of three, however, we emerged into a global pandemic and that watch was the furthest from my mind.
Six months later and we found ourselves at Tyson’s Galleria, shopping for a Canada Goose coat to bring with me to Kazakhstan. Before leaving for the shopping trip, my husband allowed me to make an appointment at the Cartier boutique because one cannot just casually pop into Cartier. The three of us were sequestered in a sitting room while I tried on watches. First, I tried in the small version of the yellow gold and steel Cartier Tank Française watch, alas I felt it was too petite. I am six foot two inches tall, after all. I then tried on the medium version to find that it was exactly what I wanted.
Despite this, I didn’t immediately buy it. While I tried watches, the Pamper Pirate became fussy, so much so that my husband rolled him out of the Cartier boutique for a walk. At over six racks, I took pause before moving forward with the purchase, and left the store. No sooner walking out of the boutique sans watch and up to my husband and son, he asked why I didn’t buy the one I had been so looking forward to trying. With that, I spun around on my heel, marched back into Cartier, and bought the watch.
Since procuring my forever watch in the year of the arrival of my oldest, which makes it all the more special, Cartier redesigned the Tank Française. The change also seems to present the discontinuation of dual toned metal in said watch.
I knew I wanted to buy brand new, and thanks to the supply and demand of the moment, was able to land my holy grail.
Horologists tend to feel passionately about vintage versus new watches. Even though I like to go to the source when shopping high end, I would have gone the vintage route, had I not been able to find the yellow gold and steel medium-size Cartier Tank Française brand new. Certain watch brands purposefully do not keep up with demand and consequently create even more demand for certain models. As such, I rounded up some new and vintage / preowned models:
