Imagining The Dress Watch Of The Future: What Could It Look Like?

I hereby declare 2025 as the first year of the Age of Elegance. Please don’t confuse the era upon us with the opulence and glamour of the Edwardian age; the Age of Elegance focuses on understated modernity, functional style, and technical charm. Sophistication 2.0 takes design cues from the rich watchmaking tradition and elevates them using state-of-the-art materials, sometimes deemed unconventional, and future-ready designs that convey a new language everyone understands. Yes, in this article, we’re imagining the dress watch of the future. We also look at which watches already fit the Age of Elegance and wonder if you would wear, for example, a ceramic Cartier or a titanium Calatrava.

Not too long ago, we dedicated an episode of Fratello Talks to dress watches. We unanimously concluded that dress watches are hot in 2025. They’re so hot, indeed, that this year marks the start of a new era. Dress watches — in the stricter definition and adjacent style — are gaining popularity rapidly, and that’s good news. Divers’, pilots’, and field watches, mostly outfitted with wild retro styling details, have ruled the roost for far too long. But even though these vintage-inspired watches often follow the trend of having smaller cases, that doesn’t make them dress watches. Sure, a small field watch might be a charming creature, but it does not qualify as a dress watch. The heritage of a field watch is the opposite of a dress watch’s. If you’re meant for the trenches, you will be out of place in a festive setting.

Cartier Tank Américaine Art-Deco Dial

Imagining the dress watch of the future: Nobody looks good in sweatpants

You don’t just wear a dress watch to opulent, Great Gatsby-esque cocktail parties; you can also wear them during home-office hours. See it as a counter-reaction to the casualization of society. During the COVID years, when people experienced lockdown to the max, casualization reached a climax. The decline of formal wear was already a steady process — think denim and sneakers in the boardroom and the absence of ties. And with Zoom meetings replacing going to the office, dressing appropriately quickly suffered from a lack of urgency. Why dress up when I’m just visible on a tiny screen-in-screen? Sweatpants quickly gained in popularity.

Luckily, people have come to their senses. Feeling good is linked to looking good, and nobody looks good in sweatpants. We will never return to stiff, dogmatic, and uncomfortable formal wear, but the trend is to dress up again. Dressing up means wearing comfortable clothes and shoes that balance appearance and functionality. Durable, comfortable, and high-quality materials form the basis of a sophisticated blend of casual and chic wardrobe choices. Yes, it’s the “casual chic” you so often find in event invitations. That dress code doesn’t require wearing tennis-inspired sneakers, khaki chinos, a white button-down shirt, and a navy-blue sports jacket, as so many now almost religiously stick to. It could also mean Chelsea boots, selvage denim, a cashmere polo, and a tan corduroy blazer.

What watch should you wear with a casual-chic look? Of course, wearing a dive watch will accentuate the informal sporty side of your attire. But why not uplift your look and accentuate the tailoring’s quality and/or heritage? Wear a watch that prioritizes style instead of having something that puts function in first place.

Rado Anatom

The obvious choice

There is a plethora of traditional dress watches to choose from. Cartier has a string of Tanks lined up for you, for instance. And if you stay in the shaped space, there are plenty of other options in different price categories. Think of the Raymond Weil Toccata Gent, Baume & Mercier Hampton, and Longines Dolcevita Automatic. There’s also the Hamilton American Classic Boulton Mechanical, the Frederique Constant Classics Carrée Automatic, and the Oris Rectangular.

Nomos Glashütte Tetra

The list is long and contains very traditional creations. Finding avant-garde dress watches in the catalogs of the big brands is not easy. The square Tetra from Nomos Glashütte comes to mind. Rado has the Anatom, a scratch-resistant ceramic creation that certainly shows touches of futurism. Maybe the Cartier Tank Louis Cartier in platinum qualifies because it forgoes the dominant Roman numerals and presents itself with a clean slate-gray dial. Still, after that prestigious creation, nothing else comes to mind.

Serica 1174 Parade

The not-so-obvious choice

The big brands play it very safe when creating a dress watch. But if they took some risk and played around with the traditional theme, things could look very different. Just look at what some microbrands have been doing lately. Quite a few good examples of adventurous, future-proof, or avant-garde dress watches are available. The Serica 1174 Parade, with its elliptical case, is one. It gives you a Golden Ellipse kind of vibe at a fraction of the price, and it does so with very nice proportions. The watch’s looks are tempting and slightly provocative, but with a stainless steel case measuring 35mm wide, 41mm long, and only 8.6mm thick, it follows the dress-watch basics of being slim and not too big.

Papar Anillo GMT

Way more provocative is the Papar Anillo GMT, a brutalist-inspired wrist object that’s also a functional flyer GMT. This watch is a polarizing oddity. The angular case has a 36mm diameter, is 12mm thick, and measures 43mm lug-to-lug. Proportionally, you would think this is all wrong, but it isn’t. The proportions and shape of the watch give it a very architectural feeling. To make things even odder, under the modernist dial beats a Miyota 9075 “flyer” GMT movement, allowing you to set the hour hand independently.

Echo/Neutra Rivanera

The Echo/Neutra Rivanera, on the other hand, is a contemporary dress watch that received unanimous praise at Fratello HQ. The watch has a rectangular Grade 5 titanium case that is 27mm wide, 40mm long, and only 5.9mm thick. Striking yet understated and original is the fine-grain sandblasted finish of the case, contrasted by beautifully polished edges. The modern case is paired with a light gray or matte black dial. Its design features beautiful Art Deco influences that complement yet contrast the angular case perfectly. Blending disparate styles creates an eclectic look with an enticing visual effect.

Cartier Santos-Dumont with green lacquer

Imagining the dress watch of the future: A view into the great unknown

Let’s recapture the adventurous and optimistic spirit of the 1950s and ’60s, often called the “golden age of futurism.” It was an era in which people had a strong sense of techno-optimism and a belief in the positive transformative power of science and technology. This positive mindset was fueled by advancements like nuclear power and space travel, leading to visions of a Utopian future in which people lived in automated homes, traveled by flying car, and had robot butlers serve their morning coffee or after-work scotch on the rocks. Now let’s add stylish watches befitting a futuristic mindset.

Cartier Santos Dumont with black lacquer

The Echo/Neutra Rivanera not only functions as a great example of a contemporary dress watch with daring and style, but it also triggers you to start imagining what could be. Take Cartier, for instance. I’m not talking about the sportier models, like the Santos Galbée XL or the blacked-out versions, but the dressier ones. The Cartier Santos-Dumont with either green or black lacquer seems to be an interim creation. It is the gateway to more modern versions of that watch. What if Cartier dares to reinterpret the design, execute it in titanium, and put it on a gray rubber strap?

Modernized Tanks could also prove future-proof “killers.” The Cartier Tank Américaine would look great in transparent sapphire. And maybe bringing back the Tank Anglaise is an idea, but it will only work if the design is (way) more sophisticated and Cartier dares to use contemporary materials. Here’s a Fratello top tip: ask the good people at fellow Richemont brand IWC if you can use their Ceratanium and give it a different name, like Cartieranium.

Patek Philippe Calatrava 6196P

Shaping the future

Another step in the right, forward-moving direction was this year’s Patek Philippe Calatrava 6196P. The dark gray hands on a salmon dial looked modern but not sporty and showed a clear link to the past. A classic Calatrava in titanium would also work, I believe. And so would a revived Gondolo in that lightweight alloy. The shaped Gondolo, in particular, has a lot of potential when stepping into new territories. I can envision a stealthy Gondolo semi-visible under the cuff of a dinner jacket or a Carhartt WIP jacket, looking all stylish and confident with just the right amount of restraint and flamboyance.

But a Gondolo in whatever shape or form will never be for everybody, so let’s round up by imagining the dress watch of the future in an affordable way. I want to propose the return of the 1980s Tissot RockWatch. This time, it will not have a round granite case but a rectangular one. The shape will accentuate the hardness of the material and mark a new chapter in the life of the iconic RockWatch. While affordable, the new version will also be a technical little marvel because of the Lightmaster Solar Quartz tech powering the watch. Because the light needed to feed the rechargeable accumulator passes through almost invisible solar panels in the sapphire crystal instead of the dial, it allows Tissot to reimagine the RockWatch without changing its essence. It could work, but would you buy it? Let me know in the comments, and please share your ideas about the future of the dress watch and what it should look like.