lot's of people these days seems to force themselves to wear or pretend to enjoy things they honestly don't care for just for the image to the public, paying $$$ for all that on top just to be seen as sophisticated
all the sudden there are lots of coffeeshop here that sells import coffee beans and people who visit there I bet they really eager to just pour creamer and some sugar to their coffee but forcing themselves to drink their coffee black and spending 2 hours chatting about the most ideal way in roasting coffee beans just because they need 2 hrs to finish their small cup of espresso they paid steak price for.
I think, though, that the average person on the street is less likely to spot one of "our" preferred jacket types as a thing of specific expense, as opposed to a Rolex, which will elicit either the assumption that the individual has "money to burn" - or that it's a fake.
I've often thought that if I had the money to spend on serious watch, I might consider a Tudor version of the Submariner.
Baudrillard had a great line on the real first being approximated by the simulation, then co-opting it, and then finally replacing/supplanting it- to the extent where it becomes impossible to remember the real at all.@zebedee,
Great quote, and quite true. Reminds me of something Baudrillard said about things becoming merely symbols of what we want people to think we are (or something like that).
I'm as guilty as the next because I express it with flight jackets (even reproductions!).
Dick is great for reality (can't believe I just wrote that).
I can't drink Starbucks, I think it's disgusting.
I think that's partly right but many people buy the jackets as part of a knowing subculture where the status of hand crafted items has its own snobbery and ostentations, so the principle may be the same.
A Tudor has that "poor man' Rolex" aura, unfortunately.
Edward the Tudor Submariner is a great option - my daily wearer is reference 75090 - known as the mid size......its 36mm, so it wear well and is all all Rolex DNA, apart from the ETA movement. Its my only Swiss watch and although in relative terms quite expensive, its something that gives me a great degree of pleasure........and of course you get to wear it all day, every day. View attachment 154615
Funnily enough, while I always prefer a small indpendent when I have the option, if I'm somewhere where it's all chains, I much prefer a Macdonalds to Starbucks as Herself and I can have a latte and a tea, respectively, for les than the price of one drink in Starbucks - and, despite also offering free wifi, MickeyDs seem not to attract middle-class, work from home wannabes who'll buy one coffee and then take up a seat all day....
That said, I'm quite the fan of enjoying a few teas or lemonades in Maan Coffee on the campus I teach in in Beijing, and an hour or two with a decent novel. Not often I have that luxury in London.
THat I totally get. I'm probably guilty of it to some extent as well.
That's part of the appeal for me, tbh. Much as I admire the classic style of a Submariner (some of their other models with multiple dials are too fussy for me - when it comes to watches, I like one dial with the time on it; more than one knob is a deal-breaker, and ideally I prefer no date window as well), there's part of me just can't quite shake the notion of Rolex as a bit gauche somehow. I'm sure I've been influenced by the folks I've known in the jewellery trade who all seemed to be uniformly of the opinion that a Rolex was overpriced. But to each their own; for now I'm happy with my Invictus Whatsit, which is very definitely a poor man's Submariner, but I love it. I think if ever I could justify that sort of money on a watch, the Tudor would be high up the list.
It does look lovely. (Funny you should use a Konica Pop for scale, too - I have that exact model camera somewhere. My parents bought it new for me in 1985!).
ooooh I LOVE Turkish coffee. That stuff is incredible. I used to think I hated coffee because the only coffee I had tried was Starbucks. Then I tried better coffee and realized that I just didn't like Starbucks.I tried it in Canada, it's literally disgusting. I couldn't finish one cup how gross it was. Well, I guess it's a cultural difference as I'm used to drinking only home made Turkish coffee but Starbucks was shockingly undrinkable to me.
@Seb Lucas,
What annoys me most about Rolex is that if I want some diamond encrusted gold Liberace looking thing, I can get it straight away, but if I want (and I do) a simple steel Submariner, no date-just, the bottom of the range, then it's not in stock and they want me to join a three year waiting list. It's an artificial lack of supply designed to maintain the brands 'exclusivity'. I guess they don't mind that this pushes resale values of base models above list price for new ones.
And this is where I find myself; d1cking around with specialist stores who scoop these up every year by ordering in advance, and then selling new watches second-hand with a mark up (you can probably tell, I'm angry about it, lol). The sheer aggravation of having to buy a 'luxury' product this way is off-putting, as is the obvious fact that Rolex don't care! They only really care about customers with more money then taste buying the Liberace cr*p than the simple steel base models (despite using pics of Chuck Yeager wearing his in the advertising for years).
Grrr.
Don’t you think many brands do this? I’d like to take the plunge into a RMC j-24 and can’t find one new in my size for anything. Clearly there is a market.@Seb Lucas,
What annoys me most about Rolex is that if I want some diamond encrusted gold Liberace looking thing, I can get it straight away, but if I want (and I do) a simple steel Submariner, no date-just, the bottom of the range, then it's not in stock and they want me to join a three year waiting list. It's an artificial lack of supply designed to maintain the brands 'exclusivity'. I guess they don't mind that this pushes resale values of base models above list price for new ones.
And this is where I find myself; d1cking around with specialist stores who scoop these up every year by ordering in advance, and then selling new watches second-hand with a mark up (you can probably tell, I'm angry about it, lol). The sheer aggravation of having to buy a 'luxury' product this way is off-putting, as is the obvious fact that Rolex don't care! They only really care about customers with more money then taste buying the Liberace cr*p than the simple steel base models (despite using pics of Chuck Yeager wearing his in the advertising for years).
Grrr.
ooooh I LOVE Turkish coffee. That stuff is incredible. I used to think I hated coffee because the only coffee I had tried was Starbucks. Then I tried better coffee and realized that I just didn't like Starbucks.
This is true and probably the only post that needed to be made in this thread.I have bought and been given high end items in the past and I have only sometimes found a link between high price and durability. My cheap items generally perform just as well. You just need to pick your stuff carefully and price may not be the important part.