My Watches May Be Strap Monsters, But I’m Not

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. Despite my own participation in the tradition, the idea of trying to tie major life changes or new habits to something as both arbitrary and specific as the New Year has always been somewhat anathema to me. Still, despite my resistance to making specific commitments at the start of a fresh calendar year, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the arrival of January can set the stage for a refresh. It’s in that mindset that I found myself spending much of the last week reorganizing basically my whole life.

And by my whole life, I mean my desk (and the various drawers and organizers that surround it). A primary focus of this odyssey has been a set of metal Ikea drawers that operate as the functional center of my watch habit. One area in need of particular attention here was my strap drawer, in no small part because of its increasing annexation of other parts of my organizational ecosystem — a problem exacerbated by a shift in approach that existed in direct conflict with my existing storage logic.

I don’t remember who first introduced them to me, but for the last few years, I’ve been storing my straps in a slowly increasing count of Muji Polypropylene Pen Cases (I think I first saw them on another collector’s Instagram, but for the life of me I can’t remember whose). With two compartments, one large enough for straps, the other perfectly sized for spring bars or loose links, these cheap plastic pencil cases make for the perfect strap cases. The only problem is I’ve been using them wrong.

My initial approach to these cases was to dedicate one to each of my watches, filling them with appropriate straps and spring bars. The idea here was to essentially create a go-bag for each of my watches. I wanted a complete arsenal of options for every watch, and being able to throw a ready-made assortment of straps in whenever I was packing for a trip, or prepping for a photoshoot seemed like the way to go. Naturally, this approach fell apart almost instantly, and for one big reason: I just don’t change my straps all that often.

Actually, I really don’t change my straps at all. For each watch I own, I tend to find one combo I like, and pretty much stick with it. When I want something with a different feel, I don’t reach for a spring bar tool, I reach for a different watch.

This stands in stark contrast to how so many of us talk about watches. I guess you could call this my entry into “Selling Points That Don’t Sell Me,” but I think the importance of versatility is vastly overblown in watch collecting. I don’t mean to say that versatile watches don’t have a place, but I do think that how we talk about versatility is a bit out of sync with the realities of modern watch collecting.

The ability to classify watches is something that really only comes with a moderately deep level of knowledge. To understand that something doesn’t belong in a certain context requires understanding what does belong, and having enough broad awareness to consider the issue in the first place. To go that extra step further and actually account and consider for those distinctions is one of the things that separates enthusiasts from the masses. Perceived versatility, like most watch features and details, is something that really only matters to enthusiasts. After all, most of the world barely bats an eye when someone wears an Apple Watch in their wedding photos (shudder) — they certainly won’t care if you wear a sports watch with your wedding tux.

Besides, if a watch needs to be paired with lots of straps and accessories to access its own versatility, how versatile is it? Most of the time, when we describe a watch as ‘versatile’ or as a ‘strap monster,’ what we really mean is that it’s sedate and unobtrusive — and usually that it’s steel with a black dial. I don’t mean that as a knock, but if we’re being honest, the only watches that go with everything are watches that don’t themselves make too much of a statement.

That recipe is what has allowed watches like the Speedy Pro — probably the platonic ideal of a strap monster — to ingrain itself so deeply in the enthusiast space. Watches like the Speedy, thanks in large part to their perceived versatility, act as platforms for collectors to make it their own. Fill a room with Speedmasters and you’ll find them on all manner of straps, and on the wrists of all manner of people. There’s a magic in that, a spark few watches have managed to tap into. But that magic comes from the varied people who wear the watch, not the straps they choose to put on the watch.

If you’ve gotten this far, I feel pretty confident in assuming that you, like me, have more watches in your life than you probably need (though probably not as many as you’d like). To buy into the fallacy that any watch needs to satisfy every itch or demand is selling the joy of collecting short. If I want to wear something that feels different from what I have on, I don’t have to bend the watch on my wrist to check a box, I can reach for something else. The deeper I get into watch collecting, the more I crave specificity, and leaning into the idea of strap monster–hood feels like moving in the wrong direction.

None of this is to say that I don’t enjoy accumulating and changing straps. On the contrary, one of my favorite parts of getting a new watch is finding the right strap for it. It’s just that, once I have the right strap, that’s it. I don’t feel any sort of need to keep pushing the issue. Like Cinderella and the glass slipper, there’s no improving on the right fit (if you buy into that sort of thing).

Which brings me back to how I’m storing my straps moving forward. As it stands today, my straps are no longer organized by what watch they might work best on today but instead are sorted to make it easier to find their perfect match at some point down the line. And sure, this new system may be putting into stark relief just how many pale green nylon straps I own, but at least I’ll know where to find the exact right one for whatever my next watch winds up being.

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A native New Englander now based in Philadelphia, Griffin has been a passionate watch enthusiast since the age of 13, when he was given a 1947 Hamilton Norman as a birthday gift by his godfather. Well over a decade later, Griffin continues to marvel and obsess about all things watches, while also cultivating lifelong love affairs with music, film, photography, cooking, and making.
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