The Capability Illusion
"Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without the necessities!" Oscar Wilde
Luxury’s quietest comfort may be the illusion of readiness — the serene reassurance that, should the ocean rise, at least one thing on your wrist could handle it.
Laurent had never been deeper than the bottom of a swimming pool, yet his watch could survive the Mariana Trench.
Every morning he fastened it with a faintly ceremonial care, as if sealing himself inside a capsule of preparedness. It was a titanium diver rated to 1,000 meters, equipped with a helium escape valve, luminous markers, and the kind of waterproofing designed for men who breathe compressed air.
Laurent, however, worked in wealth management, and the nearest thing to pressure he faced was an end-of-quarter call with his CEO. Still, he liked the feeling of being ready for depths he would never see. The water resistance was comforting — a promise that at least one thing in his life was overengineered for survival.
In his building’s elevator, the watch caught the soft yellow light and gleamed like a medal of competence. Geneva, that quiet capital of cautious men, was full of such signals.
There were SUVs idling outside private schools, their tires untested by gravel; leather duffels built for expeditions between gym and office; jackets rated for Arctic winds but worn to fetch croissants.
In this geography of safety, the appearance of capability had become its own form of luxury. The diver’s watch fit right in — a relic from the age of exploration, now reduced to aesthetic proof that one could still, in theory, act.
Laurent had bought it three years earlier, in a boutique whose windows glowed with subaquatic light. The salesman spoke of heritage, saturation diving, and James Bond.
Laurent nodded solemnly, pretending to follow the explanation of helium molecules and pressure differentials. He didn’t understand a word of it, but the story was soothing — a narrative of resilience and precision that promised meaning through material.
When the clerk handed over the polished box, Laurent felt not possession but relief: a sense that he had quietly joined a league of capable men.
Now the watch mostly timed Teams calls. During meetings he sometimes turned the unidirectional bezel, pretending to measure something invisible — latency, perhaps, or patience.
When colleagues discussed digital strategy, he liked feeling the solid weight of his analog machine. It made him appear grounded, vaguely heroic, as if he could be dropped anywhere and still know the hour. Capability, in that sense, had become its own form of theater.
At night, Laurent wiped the crystal clean with a microfiber cloth. He enjoyed the ritual.
The slow rotation of the crown, the precise resistance of gears engaging — these gestures offered a rare kind of feedback, the reassurance that something mechanical still answered to him.
He did not think of it as winding a watch. It was more like rehearsing competence. Each click restored a little order to the day, proof that readiness could be maintained by hand.
One weekend, he joined colleagues for a sailing trip on Lake Geneva. He wore his watch over the cuff of a navy windbreaker, feeling faintly ridiculous yet oddly proud.
When a sudden squall hit, the boat listed violently. Laurent clutched the rail and felt a thrill — not from fear, but from discovering a moment that justified the purchase.
He watched the seconds sweep cleanly as waves slapped the hull, timing them as if precision could steady the lake. The storm passed in five minutes.
That evening, he posted a photo to social media: his wrist against a bruised grey horizon, captioned “Finally put the diver to use.” It received 143 likes.
Later, over dinner, his friend Marc — a serious collector — turned the heavy watch in his hands. The caseback was solid steel, engraved with depths no one would test. Inside, unseen but assured, the movement pulsed behind its gaskets: thick plates for rigidity, a reinforced train tuned for torque and longevity, oils chosen to resist time.
“Five days of power reserve,” Marc said. “For a watch that will never leave dry land.”
Laurent smiled. He could not tell if his friend mocked him or the watch, but he felt a quiet tenderness for the machine — for those who had built such endurance into irrelevance.
It was not the fantasy of diving that moved him anymore, but the care behind the thing itself: a devotion to function long after the function had ceased to matter.
Months later, at a corporate dinner, Laurent noticed how nearly every man at the table wore a similar token of latent heroism. Deep divers, pilot chronographs, GMTs glowing faintly under candlelight.
The effect was solemn and faintly comic: a congregation of men equipped to cross oceans, orbit planets, or time rocket launches, all of them confined to a hotel ballroom discussing quarterly returns.
If someone had announced a flood, they would have been the most elegantly prepared casualties in history.
Over dessert, one executive explained that his watch had “been to Everest” — meaning, of course, that someone else’s identical model once had. Laurent nodded appreciatively.
The watch was no longer an instrument but a credential, a way of borrowing purpose from machinery. The more unnecessary its capabilities, the more respectable its owner appeared.
Preparedness had become a social aesthetic — a means of suggesting depth in lives that seldom risked it.
On Sunday evening, Laurent returned home and placed his diver on the dresser beside his phone. The two objects blinked softly in the dark — one digital and transient, the other mechanical and patient.
He wound the crown until he felt resistance, then one click more. Outside, rain tapped the window.
He looked at the watch — still unworn underwater, still immaculate — and felt the peculiar calm of being ready for what would never come.
The next morning, he repeated the ritual: shower, suit, strap, elevator.
The watch gleamed under the office fluorescents, a small, gleaming myth of usefulness. He liked to imagine it could withstand anything — the boardroom, the storm, even the quiet erosion of time itself.
In truth, it already had.
About the Author
This essay is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons or products is coincidental. It is intended as a cultural reflection on modern luxury and the psychology of ownership.
Sergio Galanti is an independent brand strategist and writer in the luxury watch industry. He is the editor of WatchDossier, a publication devoted to the cultural and philosophical undercurrents of modern horology.
No compensation or brand affiliation influenced this essay. Opinions are the author’s own.
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