mkvc
1304
Versatility requires moderation, and moderation helps avoid design mistakes.
I think a versatile watch will tend to be stylistically superior to specialized ones. Part of the reason for that is that you can get away with an outlandish-looking watch in a specialized situation: if you're diving 3,000 meters under water, a gigantic and clunky watch will look right at home, but if you try to wear it with your "business casual" outfit, it may be discovered to fall short of absolute beauty. Another part is that versatility is in part "getting away" with being out of place: a Rolex Submariner is absolutely out of place with James Bond's tuxedo, but it such a good-looking watch that it passes.
So, a versatile watch won't be too thick or too thin, too large or too small. It won't have an orange dial; neither will its color scheme be an unreadable silver-on-silver. It will typically have medium-thick hands, which is good for legibility but also brings balance to the dial. By process of elimination, it will fall into the top 10% of watches aesthetically.
It will have to do better than that, though: one of the demands on a versatile watch is that it be suitable for continuous wearing. That means it has to look good enough, and perform well enough, that it is rewarding to wear for days on end. A formal watch doesn't have to keep good time, as it is never worn for more than a few hours at a time. Furthermore, if it doesn't look exciting, it doesn't matter because there is no time to get bored with it before the end of the formal event. When making a versatile watch, the designers have to step up their game.
