Why does one watch look expensive while another one, using almost the exact same design ingredients, somehow looks cheap?
I started thinking about this after seeing Christopher Ward’s new Tudor-inspired diver. Almost every individual choice on the watch works beautifully somewhere else, so why doesn’t the whole thing work?
It turns out there’s a surprising amount of science behind the answer.
In this episode, I dig into Gestalt psychology, evolutionary aesthetics, bowerbirds, product-design research, originality, luxury signaling, brand identity, mere exposure, childhood influences, the Mona Lisa, the Rolex Daytona, John Mayer, and even an fMRI experiment showing that price can change how much people actually enjoy something.
The deeper question isn’t just what makes a watch beautiful. It’s how much of your taste comes from the object itself, and how much comes from everything you’ve learned about it.
Your taste is yours. That doesn’t mean you invented it.
Subscribe for more overly serious investigations into extremely unnecessary little mechanical objects.
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