Why Watches: A Watch Story

I am often asked "why watches?"

Often the assumption is because I am a collector and aficionado. I dabble, but no, not the reason - in fact when it comes to collecting, it's not even necessarily the big, special brands that appeal to me... It's the ones with stories.

When it comes to watches and Locke & King - notwithstanding the passion for ensuring that our timepieces are complex, intricate, and of an enduring quality -  arguably among my greatest interests is a watch's ability to tell a story. Whether it is the brand story, or the deep personal story written between the watch and its owner based on the significance behind their receiving it or their experience with it, or both.

With that said, here's an example from my own collection...

Carriage is not a particularly notable or prized brand, in fact, it is barely even a sub-discount brand of Timex. Yet, when my grandmother gave me this black-leather strapped, silver-cased Carriage watch for my 17th birthday, I saw it as a very special gift. The significance to me was both that it was from my grandmother, and that it was in recognition of the age that I was turning - as though I was entering this new, nearly adult phase of my life, and here's the sort of watch that a grown-ass man should wear.

Knowing nothing of watches at the time, I also assumed that my Nana, who though comfortable did not have deep pockets, must have dropped some serious coin on it.

As such, for the ensuing years, and even well into my 30s, it became the official formal watch in my collection. The one I would break out only for special occasions, both because I don't wear black too often, and because it had this deeper meaning to me as a gift from my Nana.

Sadly, my Nana passed away last December at age 95. 

In May, as my wife and I finally got to have the black-tie wedding we had been planning for the past three years - and in spite of both a modest collection and owning Locke & King - it was that discount drug store, black-strapped Carriage that completed my tux. There was no question about it.

Moreover, it now had an even deeper, embedded meaning. It was no longer just the special gift that my Nana had given me 22 years ago, in a sense it was my Nana, celebrating that day with us and with the family.

I've always felt that watches are tools, they don't tell us the time, they help us navigate what to do with the time we have to make the most of life and live our own story. Yet, they also become scribes of those stories, and symbols of our lived experiences, representing meanings that make the directions in which they point us through time only that much more significant and meaningfully precise.

For me, that is both my "why watches?" And what the heirloom-worthy Locke & King timepieces offer to those who roll up their sleeves to strap one on.