TICK TICK BOOM
You don’t need to be a gun-toting, battle-hardened man of war to wear a military watch. Ultimately, being fit for purpose is all about good design
Ask the average punter how much importance military design has on their lives and chances are you’ll get a fairly dismissive response. Cargo trousers? Camouflage print? Bags with far too many zips? Yet the reality is that products directly created to meet the needs of armed forces – or else popularised or inspired by them – are everywhere around us. Superglue, duct tape, 4x4 vehicles, even the internet – all are military inventions.
In a more obviously aesthetic sense, a great deal of what we wear started out as standardissue kit, from T-shirts to chinos, aviators to parkas. But despite the names clearly speaking to their original use – bomber jackets, trench coats, combat pants – we’ve long since divorced them from their functionality. In fact, the widespread influence of military designs has far less to do with martial cosplay than the purity of the design process.
When you design something for use in the field, you strip away superfluous touches.
You deliver only what’s necessary, using only the materials that best suit its purpose. Naturally, when these designs are turned into luxury goods, a degree of embellishment creeps back in – such as the polished links on an IWC Mark XX bracelet, for instance – but that pure and simple vision remains. Good design is good design. There should be no inherent hypocrisy in driving a Jeep, wearing a Belstaff on your back and a Breitling on your wrist, while being a cardcarrying member of the Stop the War Coalition.
This is my carefully constructed argument and 99% of the time it holds true. But sometimes careful argument goes out of the window. Most military watch design is an homage to utilitarian design ideals, but some of it is an unambiguous exercise in channelling your inner eight-year-old. Case in point: the Panerai PAM01238. Produced in association with Italian special forces, its £47,500 asking price includes the chance to spend a weekend on an intensive military training course. Alas, all 50 pieces are sold out, so we’ve featured its more discreet sister edition instead, alongside five other watches that boast a connection to combat, be it on land, sea or in the sky.