What Time is It Where You Are?
Sometimes the greatest joys in life are hidden in the smallest rituals. Like waking up groggy an hour from landing on a red-eye, still cocooned in the stillness of Airplane Mode. In that brief pocket of peaceful disconnection, I reach for my watch, twist the crown, and set the time to wherever I am headed. A quiet signal of I have arrived. In a way, my watch marks the beginning and end of every journey.
Before a trip, there is always the ceremony of packing a watch roll. A dressy dinner with friends calls for the tiny jeweled LeCoultre. Three days on a boat around Hydra demands the Heuer Diver. For casual hangs, probably the Seiko I bought in Dubai, a detail I cling to because it was my first spontaneous watch purchased in transit, made simply because the moment felt right.
For a no-sleep schedule in Ibiza, I bring my Cartier Santos Ronde because it is two-tone, super light, and has a quartz movement that makes it low maintenance and versatile. I find any excuse to wear my oversized A$AP Ferg special edition G-Shock because it is retro and campy, and any outfit with silver hardware usually gets paired with either my steel Bvlgari Bvlgari from the early 80s or my 42mm Hublot Classic Fusion Chronograph if I do not have a tight sleeve.
Hublot was my gateway drug into the watch industry, a brand I will always admire for its unapologetic, radical spirit, and this piece remains one of my favorite conversation starters because you will rarely see it on a woman.
People who don’t collect watches might not think about pairing a timepiece to a mood or occasion, or they may not be inclined to travel with watches at all, but that is the charm of the ritual. Each choice is a small act of anticipation, a way of curating time and place before they unfold.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with Pharrell Williams at the Brooklyn Museum. We spoke about collecting, and he said you miss the whole point when you buy things only to store them away in boxes. You have to wear them, live with them, and let these pieces, mundane or prized, be part of the human experience. I think about that often because I used to be so precious about utility. I would save the wine I shipped from trips to Tuscany for the “right” occasion with the “right” person, or hold back a watch until the outing felt worthy. I treated my things as if they needed permission to be used.
But more often than not, the wine spoiled, or the watch lost time. And what I have come to realize is that any simple day or trip can hold the weight of celebration if you allow it. Belongings have more meaning when they move with you, patinated with traces of life. A watch worn and weathered through travel becomes part of an ongoing love story and a reminder to live with the things we love exactly as they are intended.
That is why I love not resetting the time immediately when I return home. Perhaps it is nostalgia or a bit of rebellion, but for a day or two I indulge in the game of “what would I be doing right now at this hour?” In a world where our phones update time zones automatically, adjusting a watch by hand is one of the last tactile negotiations we have with time itself.
