WAT1440.BG0959
TAG Heuer Boutique / Bicester Village, 11th March 2019
Obviously I didn't actually put this on my wrist, it probably wouldn't go over my massive manly hand, but I did have a good look at it and it was interesting to see something which is essentially very similar to my wife's very unusual Chinese Edition Lady Link only in solid 18K gold. Obviously it's a bit heavier than my wife's Link, but it's not massively heavy, well... not to me, I wonder if my wife would agree? I have a feeling she would say it was considerably more weighty on the wrist, perhaps not Aquagraph heavy to me, maybe more like a 43mm Aquaracer.
I do like the dial colour, it goes very well with the rose gold and gives the watch a somewhat 'regal' aesthetic. Obviously it limits what you can wear it with perhaps, but it will look fantastic with anything black (or white). It's a little bit of a shame they didn't make the date window blend with the dial, but on the other hand it's so damned small that it's probably a good thing they didn't. I know from changing my wife's date that this one is particularly small and hard to see, I mean I don't really know why they bother putting a date on here at all. I've got pretty good eyesight and it's challenging for me, I doubt my wife can even see the date window!
The elephant in the room, of course is the price... and the fact that this contains a quartz movement. I can feel some of my readers wincing as I type this, but the thing is a lot of ladies don't like mechanical movements, especially mechanical movements with date wheels. The last thing my wife wants to do when she's getting ready to go out and opens her watch cabinet is to have to set the date on her watch, which is inevitably wrong because she hasn't worn the watch for three weeks. That's why she bought a no-date Oris Atelier Skeleton watch...
So, while it seems ladies are slowly coming around to the (supposed) joy of mechanical watches, for the large part it seems that quartz is still the safer bet when it comes to marketing to women, you only have to look around to see that - Omega, for example are quietly discontinuing their quartz pieces for men, but probably not doing the same for women any time soon.
So then, the price... this watch retails for a pretty humongous £17,600. In fact I'm told it's the dearest watch that's ever come to the TAG Heuer outlet at Bicester Village... Fortunately, they won't charge you £17,600 to own this watch, you can take this away for 'just' £12,320, which is still a doorwedge of cash, but with that saving you could buy yourself (from the other side of the room) a Calibre 36 Caliper Grand Carrera in black PVD with yellow highlights on an alligator strap. Just sayin'.
The only thing I have noticed about gold watches (now that I own some two-tone pieces) is that due to the relative softness of the material they do tend to pick up tiny scratches, that's not a massive problem for me on my £460 2000 Exclusive, but would I be happy if I was paying this sort of money? I'm not sure, but then again, the beauty of solid gold is that you don't have to worry about wearing the top layer off, so you could give it a polish now and again if you really needed to.
It's a pity my wife wasn't with me on this visit as I'd be interested to see her reaction. I have a feeling she'd say it was beautiful but it's not six times as beautiful as the watch she already owns. At the end of the day I guess it depends how you feel about gold, and how big your bank balance is... and I still get the feeling it would be easier to sell this to a woman for £12k than a gold Carrera to a guy for £10k.
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