Hip to be SQUARE

More commonly marketed to women, are we about to see a resurgence of square watches for men? If so then Longines is ahead of the curve

- CHRIS HALL

When you think about it, there are plenty of logical reasons for a watch to be round. The mechanics inside a movement operate in circles, from the unwinding mainspring that drives the watch to the wheels and gears that translate that energy into regular, controlled motion. It’s easiest to read the time on a circular dial, with every point equidistant from the centre, and at a deeper, more fundamental level, the building blocks of our system of measuring time are all approximately circular: the rotation of the earth on its axis around the sun, and that of the moon around the earth.

There are other practical reasons, too – as watches were developed in the 1930s and ’40s to be more durable and hard-wearing, round cases found favour partly because they were easier to water-proof, usually by screwing the back into the circular case, and when watches capable of surviving hundreds of metres underwater were required, round cases were better able to deal with the pressure.