A Love Letter to the Rolex Explorer
There are watches, and then there is the idea of a watch.
Ask someone who knows nothing about horology to picture one and three images usually appear.
First: a small, simple vintage piece on a leather strap — usually an Omega.
Second: a dive watch. The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms may have been first, but the Submariner is the one people mean. Try as it might, Blancpain is the Frazier to Rolex’s Ali.
Third: the plain Oyster Perpetual. And for the outdoorsy sort who occasionally wears a suit, perhaps its slightly more rugged cousin: the Explorer.
This is the story of the watch I didn’t particularly want, and then quietly fell in love with.
Let me begin with a declaration for any friend facing the familiar dilemma: Rolex or Tudor.
I’ve written about this before. The answer is simple.
Just buy the damned Rolex.
The Tudor Ranger is a cooler watch. But it isn’t cool. It is admired by collectors and enthusiasts, which is not quite the same thing.
Tudor has a more straightforward story, too. It was a Smiths that actually summited Everest, after all. But history is rarely fair. Rolex became synonymous with the achievement.
Tudor explored Greenland. Admirable, certainly, but would anyone have cared?
Perhaps a certain American president might wear one knowing that detail.
But most people would not.
Tudor, the little brother brand, signals allegiance to a certain tasteful counterculture.
It is the watch of the Aaron Levine follower.
The off-piste skier.
The man restoring an old Volkswagen camper and making £7,000 in the process.
They cannot stand the idea of a Rolex.
Too flashy. Too City.
Just ask modern James Bond.
Once you enter the luxury watch world, you quickly see the hierarchy.
It begins with the lower Swatch brands and runs up through the likes of Christopher Ward.
Then comes the mid-tier luxury bracket: TAG Heuer, Tudor, IWC.
Above that sit the great industrial houses : Rolex, Omega, Cartier.
Beyond them lies Holy Trinity territory. I admire it, but from a distance. Now, the Vacheron Constantin Overseas and the 222 tempt me occasionally…but not currently in the cards.
Omega offers perhaps the strongest competition in the everyday category.
The Railmaster and Aqua Terra are both superb watches. I’ve tried them. I love them. They may well be the best value on the list.
The Cartier Santos is the most stylish entry here. It has more personality than the others. Like a Porsche Cayenne, it can do almost anything.
But look at those polished screws.
Do you really want to take it into the mud?
And so we arrive at the Rolex Explorer.
Its larger sibling, the Explorer II, is a GMT built for proper adventurers. But you’re not that.
You’re shopping for one of these, after all.
You need a watch that can take a scratch and still look correct with a suit afterward. Something that sits comfortably beneath the cuff of a Barbour jacket and doesn’t draw attention to itself.
The Explorer is exactly that watch.
Part of the brilliance lies in its restraint.
The Railmaster and Aqua Terra appear in endless variations: different straps, different dials, different colours.
The Explorer does not.
There is one dial.
Two sizes.
A three-link Oyster bracelet.
That’s it.
And the dial itself, the famous 3-6-9 layout, feels almost timeless now. Revived in the late 1980s, it is old enough to feel slightly retro-futurist.
Icons often come from limitation.
The Explorer is nothing if not restrained.
Rolex is not the end-all of watches.
Its job is actually much simpler.
A Rolex reminds you that for the limited rotations you have on this earth — that you might be doing something right.
I have seen grown men become oddly emotional about the brand.
Some of that is undoubtedly tied to careers, milestones, the quiet anxieties of adulthood.
Rolex can become a totem.
But beware the man who lets the watch define him.
A Daytona might help you believe in your abilities…but if the watch disappears and your confidence goes with it, something has gone badly wrong.
The watch does not make the man.
The man makes the watch.
Rolex’s real genius lies elsewhere.
It is the default watch of history’s interesting men.
Ian Fleming. Winston Churchill. Paul Newman.
Steve McQueen.
Rolex appears again and again at life’s bigger moments.
It is a bit like sneaker culture in that sense.
The legend is built through referential reverence.
James Bond in Dr No.
Tiger Woods’ comeback.
James Cameron descending into the Mariana Trench.
Rolex is there in the background of those stories.
Each watch carries a little of that inheritance.
Which brings me to the slightly peculiar reason I bought mine.
My Explorer is a 39mm Mark I. A polarising reference that collectors sometimes dismiss because the 3-6-9 numerals lack lume.
Apparently this makes it less desirable.
That is precisely why I bought it.
Rolex rarely produces quirks.
But this was one of them — a short-lived run with white-gold only numerals before the design was adjusted again.
Later versions returned the lume, changed the dial lacquer, thickened the printing, and shifted the text slightly.
Mine remains the odd one out.
It is also called the T-Rex because the hands are shorter than the other models… but the detail guy in me doesn’t want the hands to overlap with the hour markers… quite the opposite, the lume and ends of the hands blend seamlessly. And I like it that way.
I’ll opt for more white gold over more blue glow in the dark paint anyway.
It suits my life perfectly.
Adventures in Fitzrovia.
A leather clad 2010’s BMW wandering the valleys of Wales.
A quiet-luxury lifestyle that occasionally flirts with the rough and tumble.
The Explorer also happens to be a remarkable strap monster.
Show me a strap that doesn’t work on it.
Mine spends most of its time on a grey NATO borrowed from my Tudor Black Bay, though the Oyster bracelet remains one of the most comfortable ever made. I’ve had watches that try to ape it. Longines’ 3 link is miles off. The Tudor one is close, but the Rolex…
Nothing so substantial has ever felt so smooth on my wrist.
Every now and then another watch catches my eye.
A ’90s Bluesy Submariner, perhaps one of the great attainable grails.
But I always return to the same thought.
The Explorer is enough.
And perhaps that is the final lesson.
Watches, like life, tempt us toward nostalgia. Toward reliving old triumphs or chasing the next milestone.
But a good watch reminds you of something simpler.
We are defined not by the moments we replay, but by the ones we create next.
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