On my most recent trip to the Worn & Wound offices in Brooklyn, I received an email toward the end of my week in the city from the rep for Zenith, one of my favorite brands. Would I be interested in taking one of the new Zenith Chronomaster Opens on loan for a bit so I could write about it for the site? Yes, of course I would. I honestly didn’t even realize while I was quickly skimming the email that it was the rose gold version being offered up. Well, let me tell you: that’s not an opportunity I’m going to miss. People generally don’t just go around asking me if I want to borrow a brand new gold chronograph for a few days. Frankly, I can’t imagine why.
And so it was that on my last day in the office, a package arrived with the watch inside, unceremoniously presented in its black Zenith travel case. I opened it up, removed the watch, set the time, and strapped it on. Over the course of a long Memorial Day weekend, the rose gold Chronomaster Open would barely leave my wrist, and never leave my sight. This is the nature of taking on an expensive loaned watch. If I had the ability to sleep with one eye open, believe me when I tell you I’d have it trained on the solid gold chronograph sitting on my bedside table.
Here’s the thing: I’m incredibly careful with all of the watches that are lent to me for review purposes. Remember, I’m the guy who travels with the bare minimum of watches in tow, because my anxiety ridden brain is perennially worried I’m bound to lose one someday. And don’t try to tell me that the fact that I’ve never actually lost a watch, traveling or otherwise, is a sign that it’s a fate not likely to befall me. In my mind, it just means I’m due. This is just to say, in writing about my experience with a gold watch for a weekend, I can’t ignore the fact that my experience was inherently colored by the simple fact that this particular gold watch was most definitely not mine. Would I be able to relax and just enjoy the thing? This was an open question as I got ready to head back to New Hampshire on an early evening Acela train.
It turns out, I had plenty of time to ponder this while waiting in Moynihan Train Hall, certainly a more aesthetically pleasing venue to wear this particular watch than the subterranean and generally horrifying Penn Station, just across 8th Avenue. Late afternoon on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, it turns out, is a busy time to travel. My train was delayed. I found a (relatively) quiet place to sit down and aimlessly stare at my phone while I waited for the “Stand By” message to come over the intercom. I caught myself looking at the Chronomaster Open frequently. Not necessarily to check the time. More to confirm that it’s there, on my wrist, and that I haven’t imagined this whole scenario somehow.
Anyway, here I was, not quite post-pandemic, in an absolute sea of humanity, throngs of people passing each other to who knows where, just to get away for what I’m sure they all hoped would be a relaxing weekend of cookouts, parades, and all the other trappings of a leisurely summer weekend. I’ve been wearing this gold watch for the better part of a full workday at this point, and I still catch myself feeling genuinely surprised when I look toward my wrist to check the time (or just admire the thing) and see the luster of gold and not the cool slab of steel I’m used to. In the office, it didn’t feel strange to wear it because it’s a little watch bubble where everyone is more or less thinking and talking about watches constantly. But now that I was out in the world (and you’re never more fully “in the world” than waiting for a train in midtown Manhattan) I wondered to myself if there could ever be a scenario where a watch like this would seem normal to me.
Eventually, my little adventure with the gold Chronomaster Open came to an end, as all adventures do. I was happy to release it back to its rightful place. Putting on a steel watch for the first time after boxing up the Zenith, I felt an immediate return to the status quo that I was perfectly fine with. But even with the modest agita that came with guarding this gold piece for a weekend, it’s easy to see the appeal. Just the other day I wrote about another gold (also, platinum) watch that I haven’t seen in person, and tried to convey that the draw of a watch like this really comes down to an appreciation for beautiful objects. Usually, for me, this is a fairly abstract concept when it comes to high value precious metal watches, but having the Chronomaster Open in my care for a few days made it more real. This watch, the Zenith, costs a little more than $20,000, which is far more than I’d be comfortable spending on anything that I’d wear on my body while navigating the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through. But I thoroughly enjoyed living out a gold watch fantasy for a long weekend, and came away thinking that even if a gold watch doesn’t immediately make your life more glamorous, interesting, or luxurious, it presents ample opportunity to admire something that is just simply gorgeous. And that’s always something that’s worth doing, whether you’re in a busy train hall, a bar, or just dozing off on your couch as the air conditioning blasts during a hot summer weekend. Zenith
