I Tried to Make the Apple Watch Ivy; It Isn’t

By Jim Moore

Ivy Style contributor James Moore is the English Department Chair and Director of Squash Programs at Blair Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey. Jim is a graduate of Cornell University where he was a member of the squash team, the glee club, and the Delta Chi fraternity.

Adapting Technology to Ivy Style: An Exercise in Futility

I like watches, but I am not a Watch Guy. My friend, whom we’ll call Beekman, is a Watch Guy, and struggles to choose a favorite from his thirty or so timepieces that range from a quotidian quartz-driven Seiko to a Swiss triumph of mechanics and precious metals by Audemars-Piguet. Wherever we get together, I ask Beekman about the watch he’s wearing, or the latest addition to his collection. Beekman was a corporate lawyer in his working days, and it’s much more engaging to observe him giddily demonstrate what Watch Guys call a “complication” in his Patek Philippe than it was to try to keep up while he explained the structure of a special purpose acquisition vehicle.

I have a collection of watches, too, but I have acquired them in a much less ambitious, strategic, and expensive manner; indeed, I have simply accumulated them over the years, rather than collected, and somehow now have, on my dresser, four. My watches range in age from about five to thirty-five years, in price from seventy to 350 dollars, and in formality from a Swiss Army chronograph to a silver-colored Hamilton tank with a deep navy leather band that I wear with sober hard-finished wool suits. It is a good Ivy-appropriate quartet, traditional in appearance and modest in price, and while Beekman and I would both enjoy having him supervise my purchase, through his sources, of a six thousand dollar Omega Speedmaster, I’m happy with what I’ve got and equally happy to hold onto the six grand.

Now here’s the thing: I have a fifth watch, which I am compelled by my interest in health and fitness to wear at some point every day. It is, of course, an Apple Watch, the most basic recommended by Wirecutter, that allows me to track my exertions on my bicycle and the track, in the gym, and on the squash court; it also, as it will do sometime in the next ten minutes, advises me to stand up and walk around. (I won’t elaborate on why I feel this need to measure and be reminded of such things but suffice it to say that maintaining one’s physical well-being in one’s seventh decade requires a different sort of attention than it did in the first six.) The Apple Watch is great at helping me stay focused on these important activities, but what it’s not at all good at is accessorizing Ivy clothing, and so I leave it on its charger when I’m not actually using it for something. And then I don’t get credit for all the steps I take during the day, which drives me nuts.

I can tell that Beekman, the Watch Guy, regards the Apple Watch with cordial disdain, and he’s kind enough to observe that “whatever watch makes you happy is the best watch.” “Brian,” an absurdly fit colleague of mine, considers the Apple Watch simply another screen that threatens to consume his time and attention, which would be better spent lifting or playing tennis. (Somewhere between me and Beekman on the analog watch spectrum, Brian has amassed a small collection of Shinola pieces, the prices of which are close enough to what I consider reasonable that I have considered getting one myself.) On the other hand, our colleague “Endicott,” who is Ivy-educated but eschews OCBDs for the trimly tailored spread-collar shirts he has made whenever he goes to Hong Kong, wears an Apple Watch with an attractive aftermarket band, and it looks fine with the style of clothing he wears.

I have tried the obvious solutions. Many companies that make watch straps– and there are more than you’d think there’d be– offer the striped NATO or grosgrain bands we Ivy aficionados find appealing but configured to attach to an Apple Watch. Adding such a band softens the look, but at the end of the day, it’s still something on your wrist that emits light, rather than reflects it. Likewise, I have scrolled through the range of watch faces Apple has designed and found some attractively sporty, with lots of sub-dials, and others elegantly spare, with Roman numerals. Paired with the NATO band, the former might work nicely with a polo and shorts and bound to the wrist with a nice leather strap, the latter might show up reasonably well under tailoring. But at the end, neither truly rhymes with a sack coat and a beefy Oxford cloth.

I have also tried the less obvious and, in retrospect, preposterous experiment: wearing an analog watch at my wrist and the Apple Watch next to it, at the narrow part of my forearm. This arrangement required I keep my shirtsleeves buttoned at the cuff, rather than rolled up, to hide the Apple Watch. While this approach sort of worked because I was wearing tailoring, and the real watch peeped out appropriately from under my cuff, it also made me self-conscious all morning, which, you will recognize, is hardly conducive to feeling Ivy. Accordingly, I removed the Apple Watch before noon, stuffed it in my pocket, and immediately felt a rush of well-being. Discretion being the better part of valor, I did not even try the associated tactic of wearing an analog watch on one wrist and the Apple Watch on the other.

The truth about the silicon-based marvel that is the Apple Watch is that, like the laptop on which I write this, like the new iPhone to which I upgraded early this summer, it too shall pass. Unlike the analog field watch I bought back in 1991, when Eddie Bauer was still an outfitter of repute, it will ultimately fail to help me make my way through the day, even if I take good care of it. Unlike that Swiss Army watch, about twenty years old, it will not pass to one of my children when I have gone on to my reward. Unlike my other watches, which have, like all good Ivy things, joined a larger narrative as they age, it is only a tool, albeit a fine one. In the end, it will simply conk out one day, my exercise rings vanishing forever with its last blink, an event signifying only that it’s time for an upgrade.