When Wearing Your Dream Watch Leaves You With a $12,000 Question

Originally published by Sarah Miller on Hodinkee.

When I was a kid, one of my mother’s close friends had a Cartier Tank with a black lizard strap. I can picture it on her wrist now, its gold edges gleaming beneath the turned-back cuff of a spotless camel cashmere cardigan.

She was from Atlanta, a world away from us in Massachusetts, and her nails were always beautifully manicured. She wore actual eye makeup; I never saw her without it. My mother was an attractive and reasonably fashionable person, but she did her nails herself in front of 60 Minutes, never wore anything but lipstick, and would have died before spending money on a manicure or more than $50 on a watch. I have therefore always associated Cartier Tanks with a cultivated and detail-oriented femininity which I have been curious about my entire life but never gotten around to inhabiting.