How To Wear It The Vacheron Constantin Patrimony

Welcome to "How To Wear It," where our Style Editor Malaika Crawford takes one beloved watch and shows you how to make it look its best – with styling tips and tricks, a delve into the current fashion discourse, some historical references, and a dash of British sarcasm thrown in for good measure.

The thing is, watches just have so much meaning behind them. They're often sentimental heirlooms or milestone markers. And the watch collecting world contains a vast range of incomes, a full gamut of technical expertise, and varying degrees of innate stylishness.

Watches, like clothing, are an expression of culture. Even when their designs date back decades or centuries, their popularity – to say nothing of their value – and the way they're worn reflects what's happening in the zeitgeist.

Sure watches are functional, but nobody wears them out of necessity anymore. If you choose to wear a watch, you're making a statement via your wrist. A Seiko diver is just as much of a statement as a yellow gold Daytona. They are just two very different statements.

Styling is by nature very personal, as is your choice of watch. My hope is that this series will serve as a helpful resource for those who may be new to watches and want to figure out what to wear outside of the usual Rolex Day-Date and Cartier Tank spectrum, as well as for longtime watch lovers who'd like to find new and unexpected ways to wear their classics.

The Vacheron Constantin Patrimony is pure understated luxury. If you are looking for something simple, clean and classic then consider this the horological counterpart to a freshly pressed, crispy white button-up shirt. Although it debuted in 2004 it's also, in a certain way, a very 2023 watch – which is why we're covering it at this particular moment.

At 40mm in diameter and 6.8 mm thick, the VC Patrimony ref. 81180 is a satisfyingly thin slice of white gold that slips oh so elegantly under the cuff of your suit jacket, but it also works with a T-shirt and jeans (and a heavy dose of nonchalance).

I find the most successful outfits are usually a sum total of various mismatched parts that somehow work together unexpectedly. Casual clothing + formal watch = perfectly balanced imbalance.

When it comes to dress watches, I usually veer towards vintage. But there's something so refreshing to me about a supremely traditional dress watch with modern dimensions. Enter the Vacheron Patrimony.

I'll be honest, I'm exhausted by the amount of time I've used up in my life listening to watch enthusiasts harp on about their need for smaller size watches. I understand the argument, I'm with you; a well-proportioned watch represents effortless elegance – no need for the logo on your watch to be visible to the person across the room. But I'm also a strong proponent of watch diameter diversity. And this time, I say wear a slightly larger dress watch and enjoy the contrast of ultra thin proportions in a larger case diameter. It works!

The Patrimony is one of those watches that slips under the radar – very much in keeping with the brand itself, which represents (and in some ways has always maintained) the very au courant idea of quiet luxury, which is also having a moment in the fashion world. Clothing brands like The Row, Celine, and Khaite embody the consumer move towards items that are essentially basic wardrobe staples, just a little elevated through good tailoring and expensive fabrics. Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana (the wealthy man's basics) have long done likewise.

The rise in popularity of the "quiet luxury" aesthetic stems, like most fashion trends, from the pop culture zeitgeist: picture the cast of Succession, Cate Blanchett in Tàr or Gwyneth Paltrow's recent trial wardrobe. And let's not forget that the economic climate has massive sway on what designers deem suitable for the runway. In 2023 it feels somewhat démodé to be bandying about logo-clad handbags and yellow gold sport watches.

Much like owning a high-ticket luxury handbag that is undetectable to the masses, the discreet dress-watch is another quiet luxury flex. The Vacheron Constantin Patrimony fits into this mold. At 40mm this watch eschews convention (which dictates the  traditional size of 33 to 35mm for a dress watch), however it remains supremely traditional in its proportion of dial to bezel, and bezel to lugs. It's an elegant timepiece, with its domed slope of the sapphire crystal and bezel, smooth disc-like shape, the curved spring bars that trace the arc of the case for additional elegance of line.

The VC Patrimony ref. 81180 / 000G-9117 is equipped with manual-winding Caliber 1400, which is decorated with the Geneva hallmark; it remains enclosed behind an 18 karat fully solid white gold caseback. So let's break this down: The watch is artisanally finished internally to Geneva hallmark standards, and nobody other than the watchmaker will ever see it: This feels like the most quiet luxury of all the luxuries.

The silver matte finish dial has an eggshell appearance, with perfectly stick-thin hand-applied white gold indices that curve to the slope of the dial. Inspired by mid-century Vacheron Constatnin dress watches (the peak ultra-thin-dress-watch era), the Patrimony features vintage inspired baton hands and comes on a black alligator strap with monotone stitching and is lined with calf leather, fastened with a white gold Maltese cross pin buckle.

Look 1:  A Very Contemporary Take On Tweed.

This creamy tweed suit look is my own little personal ode to the insane genius of Gucci's former Creative Director, Alessandro Michele. The look was pulled from Michele's last runway show for the brand. Titled #Twinsburg, the collection consisted  of 2 x 68 looks worn by 68 sets of twins. Even without knowing that Michele was to step down from his seven-year tenure, the show left a resounding impact.

Michele's superpower was his ability to to take a romantic idea (Hollywood, Roman architecture, Renaissance tableaus and, in this particular case, twins), modernize it, embellish it, mix it all up, and present you with a patchwork quilt of eras, color palettes, patterns, proportions – almost always topped off with comically oversized sunglasses, gaudy jewels, and some kind of fur trim.

Michele was enamored with the glamor of the past, but totally driven to push freedom of creative expression forward. His absolute inclusivity of pretty much anything and everything when it came to casting and clothes shaped the politics of the fashion landscape and totally derailed the generic definitions of coolness and beauty. Michele created a kind of club for eccentricity, it was suddenly à la page to be united in one's appreciation of "ugly beautiful" clothes.

This suit, a nod to the iconic Chanel Tweed suits of the 20th century which have come to represent a certain type of WASPish femininity (despite the fact that Coco Chanel herself was known for mixing traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity, most notably with her conception of these very tweed suits) is a further example of Michele's inclusivity agenda.

My idea when styling this look with the Patrimony was to play with size and proportion and to create a balance between the juxtaposition of traditional and modern.

Not dissimilar to the dichotomy of a traditional dress watch with larger, more modern dimensions, this tweed suit is also modernized and flipped on its head: It's a Gucci interpretation of a Chanel classic, with pants instead of skirt. The proportion is generous with a roomy jacket and a more 1970s-cut trouser. It's a total mish-mash of decades and inspiration, but somehow it works. Matching the dial to the suit and shoes when styling this also renders the mood serenely monochromatic.

I chose this suit with intention. It represents Michele's gender fluid vision, one where both men and women wore floral dresses, blazers with chaps, feather boas and pussy bows. As we've said on this site many times, genderless watches are now a thing. And becoming more of one all the time.

Michele inspired an entire generation of dressing. And this subdued watch, though on the surface the exact opposite of his baroque worldview, actually compliments it perfectly.

Look 2: Textural Mix-and-Match

Through social media platforms, most notably TikTok, Millennial and Gen Z content creators are driving tomorrow's fashion forecast. Their milieu is the microtrend, like for instance "cottage core." (If you're not familiar, Google it. Or maybe don't.)

Unlike a broader narrative that may be presented in a runway show and played out for a few seasons as it trickles from high fashion down to high street, the microtrend is about picking and choosing the bits you want from pretty much any source of inspiration.

This look is a mishmash of textures, colors, and decades. But it's important to note the through line: subtle white accents. The white stitching on the earthy-toned, short-sleeved Hermès suede jacket ties together everything from the undershirt to the white detail in the plaid trousers, the shoes, and the creamy dial on the Patrimony.

The Hermès jacket, made in a beautifully earthy terracotta shade of suede, is a modern take on a classic blouson jacket with zip closure. The large pockets add a '70s touch while the short sleeves keep it contemporary.

When I sort through the clothes on a rack before a photoshoot, the very first thing I do (after some serious organizing) is to slowly run my hands over all of the different garments and fabrics, picking out texture and weight as I go. I look for the details (stitching, buttons, belt loops, pleats) that I know will make a big difference to the end result and show up well on camera. The same rule applies when looking at watches. I pay special attention to the shape, accents, and texture of the dial.

The Patrimony left an imprint of crispy, creamy white with tiny flashes of white gold. So I looked for a way to emulate this in my choice of clothes – which, again, balance traditional and contemporary. Just like the watch.

Look 3 : The Not So Simple Baggy Jeans and Tee.

It's always better to be overdressed rather than underdressed. I would like to double underline and furiously highlight this point when it comes to choice of watch. Hear me now: Dress watches work on all occasions. Stainless steel sport watches do not.

What you see here may seem like a simple T-shirt and jeans combo (okay, giant wavy jeans are not so simple, but a T-shirt and jeans are the perennial modern dress code). It's actually, contextually, so much more.

The tee, by British-Jamaican menswear designer Martine Rose, is a nod to the desire for an exploration of all subcultures. We're back to microtrends! Martine Rose has drawn inspiration from her interest in rave, hip-hop, and punk subcultures, as well as her life growing up in South London. Her designs constantly reference these subcultures, and Rose, much like Michele, draws on a play of dismantling traditional proportions in menswear, juxtaposing fabrics and accentuating the tension found in today's accepted codes of menswear.

The Louis Vuitton jeans remind us of the pendulum that swings between minimalism and maximalism and then back to minimalism. This is also true for watches. My fatigue over the small-watch debate has inspired me to quite literally think big when it comes to diameter. A 40mm white gold dress watch with skater-inspired oversized Louis Vuitton jeans and a Martine Rose tee is my own reaction to watch-world etiquette.

Speaking of etiquette, feel free to apply the philosophies of this column to timepieces beyond the VC Patrimony ref. 81180. By all means, insert your favorite dress watch here. How To Wear It is not meant to be prescriptive – in other words, these are not the only ways to wear it. I'm more interested in helping you let go of any gentleman's guide to style you may have etched in your mind, or any rules that have been firmly imprinted onto your brain. I'm giving you new rules to bend, shape, and play with. Because real style is personal style.

Groomer: Sophie Ono at The Brooks Agency, Model: Mamadou at Crawford Models, Photo Assistants: Hailey Heaton and Matt Keough, Digital Tech: Jonathan Pivovar, Styling Assistants: Jade Boulton and Obadiah Russon