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OPINION: Fancy a date? In defence of the much-maligned date window OPINION: Fancy a date? In defence of the much-maligned date window

OPINION: Fancy a date? In defence of the much-maligned date window

Felix Scholz

We’ve got a surprisingly complex relationship with date windows in the Time+Tide office. And not just because we’ve been known to forget to set them on occasion. No, every time we review a vintage reissue we can be assured that we’ll have a host of comments on various social media platforms that read something like this:

“Love the design, but they RUINED it with that ugly date window.”

Ruined by the date?

I understand this reaction, and to be fair there are plenty of sloppily designed date windows out there. But ruining a watch? I’m not so sure. A few years ago we were interviewing Walter Von Känel, CEO of Longines, and we mentioned in passing that his heritage collections received near-universal praise, except for the fact that they almost invariably included a date. We asked why he put a date in. To my recollection (it’s a few years ago now), Mr Von Känel laughed and said that he did it because most people wanted dates on watches.

He’s got a point. I suspect that most people wouldn’t be able to tell you off the top of their heads what today’s date is. Sure, there’s a profusion of screens in our lives that carry this information, but I think it’s still far more convenient to quickly glance at your watch than to dig around for your phone. And the date is something you need quite frequently. Signatures, online forms, scheduling your life in general: for all of these, the day of the month is more pertinent knowledge than the day of the week – or for that matter, what month it is.

Subtle placement on the TAG Heuer Autavia

I don’t think I’m the minority opinion here. If, by some miracle, we were able to get access to an apples-to-apples comparison – say, the sales figures for the Rolex no-date Submariner versus the date version – I suspect that the latter would far outstrip the former. And I for one don’t think that watch brands, who are in the business of selling watches after all, should acquiesce to a small but vocal lobby of no-date purists to the detriment of the many for whom this little window offers genuine, if occasional, functionality.