Worn & Wound
Editorial: When Your Wrist Gets Smaller, Your Watches Change Too
A few weeks ago I decided to wear my Tudor Black Bay for the first time in several months. It’s a watch I love that I’ve written about many times on this website, but I’d been enjoying other more recently acquired pieces for some time and the Black Bay had been collecting proverbial dust in the watch box. So on a chilly winter afternoon I wound it up and set the time. But then, instead of closing the bracelet around my wrist and going about my business, I hauled out my little set of watchmaking tools to size the bracelet. Because the actual reason I hadn’t worn it in so long wasn’t entirely a result of being in the honeymoon phase with other watches, it was knowing I had a small chore in front of me if I didn’t want the watch to dangle pathetically from my wrist, and for a while it just seemed easier to ignore it. Over the last year, in an effort to become healthier and, you know, live longer, I’ve lost a significant amount of weight, and it’s had a dramatic effect on how my watches wear, and how I think about them. I’d been putting off an afternoon of resizing all of my watch bracelets in part because I was nervous that once I had my 41mm Black Bay on my now half inch smaller wrist, it would disappoint somehow. I gravitated toward smaller watches all summer and fall of last year as the shape of my body began to noticeably change, wearing my larger watches more sparingly and over shorter stretches of time. The author’s Black Bay on his 7.5 wrist, Oc...
