Watches: it’s hip to be square
Cool watches with square cases. By Ben Oliver
‘Asquare peg in a round hole’ makes a good visual analogy for the awkward and idiosyncratic, so it was a brave watch designer who first put a round dial in a square case. A watch’s hands (you’ll have noticed) move in circles, so a square case leaves some redundant dial in each corner and has edges that can fray cuffs, assuming you still wear them. But it can also produce a handsome watch: freed of analogue hands, Marc Newson chose a square case with rounded corners for the Apple watch.
Square watches have been in the horological news again recently. You can’t talk about square watches without referencing the 1960s Heuer Monaco, and you can’t discuss the Monaco without mentioning Steve McQueen, who gave Heuer an endorsement it’s traded on for 50 years since he wore one in his 1970 film Le Mans.
The association adds considerably to the value of the vintage 1133-reference Monaco he wore: you’ll pay up to £25,000 for a good one now. At a recent Phillips auction in New York, one of the six used in the filming of Le Mans, which was engraved and given by McQueen to his long-time mechanic Haig Alltounian, sold for $2.2m. If that seems insane, Paul Newman’s second-best Rolex Daytona sold in the same auction for $5.4m, his best having made nearly $18m in 2017. Imagine how much McQueen’s Monaco might have made if it were round.
If you still want a square watch but don’t have millions, then leftfield and comparatively affordable Swiss brand Rado is worth a look. It has long pioneered new materials and shapes, and in collaboration with British industrial designer Tej Chauhan has just launched a new version of its True Square with a mustard yellow square ceramic case, matching pillowy leather strap and electric-blue dial details. It looks way better than that sounds, and if you’re set on a round dial in a square case you clearly don’t mind a disruptive design anyway.