mfad•3y ago

Wearing Watch under dress shirt (with or without suit jacket)

My cuff completely covers my watch. If I want to look at the time, I raise my left arm up, which reveals like half of the watch, then I use my right hand to push back my shirt sleeve to see the time.
Is this correct?

Also, when I drop my arm after looking at the watch, my shirt cuff and suit jacket are parallel, so I have to pull out the shirt sleeve a bit so that it's symmetrical with my other arm -- is that normal?

gimp•9/21/23, 1:39 AM

Yep.

The alternatives are:

Don't wear a watch
Wear a very thin dress watch rather than a larger watch or a "tool watch", which will make it much easier for the watch to be visible at the end of your wrist and will make it less likely first shirt + jacket to get caught on it
Buy, or have commissioned, shirts and jackets with a wider left cuff than right cuff (or vice versa depending on which arm you wear a watch on)

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{}•9/21/23, 4:18 AM

how common is the mismatched cuffs option?

gimp•9/21/23, 4:19 AM

Pretty standard if you get stuff made custom. You could never tell without measuring the cuffs that one is slightly larger than the other to accommodate a watch

gimp•9/21/23, 4:19 AM

Off the rack, not sure but I suspect not at all standard

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{}•9/21/23, 4:21 AM

cool, interesting

beans•9/21/23, 4:21 AM

It’s super easy to move the button tho to make that alteration on shirts you already have

jxbar1o•9/21/23, 1:00 PM

It’s also why some dress shirts intentionally have each cuff with two button holes: your wristwatch sleeve is set looser so your watch can easily slip out, while your non-wristwatch sleeve is set tighter so it sits closer to your wrist when extending out your arms.

Some shirts also have the buttonhole placed higher up the wrist / closer to the sleeve placket instead of being in the middle so that there’s more play for the fabric when you flick up the cuff to reveal your watch.