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Apple Watch: the fashion verdict

I have been wearing the Apple Watch for two hours now, and I’m profoundly disappointed. Because despite chuckling with exaggerated laughter as I read an email on my wrist in Topshop, and ostentatiously finger-sketching smiley-faces in full view of the queue in Wasabi, not one single person has noticed it. Even when I used it as a phone, answering a call from my husband walking through St Pancras station with the watch in front of my mouth in full Knight Rider fashion, nobody is impressed. (Least of all my husband. “Wait, do you mean my voice is coming on speaker out of your watch?” he asks, and then pretty much hangs up on me.)

And impressing people, if we’re honest, is the point of the Apple watch. This is the first piece of tech that has achieved standalone desirability, rather than as an extension of its functionality. When I told friends I was trying it out, the most common response was: I want one (this came first); does it work? (as an afterthought).

Beautiful design has always been a cornerstone of the Apple brand, but the watch takes this further. It is sleek and elegant but it is also slightly, yet deliberately, frivolous. The watch comes in 38 possible variations of strap and screen size, all of which have exactly the same memory and capability: a clear acknowledgement of the value of personal style. For the first time ever, Apple has targeted celebrities and tastemakers. (Beyoncé and Karl Lagerfeld both had solid-gold Apple watches before they went on public sale). And the new ways of communicating offered by the watch are whimsical, verging on silly: you can send a heartbeat, or you can sketch initials or a face. The “taptic engine” is exactly what it sounds: a motor that gives you a tiny tap on the wrist when a message comes through from one of your favourited contacts. It’s a nice, friendly tap, not the static shock I had imagined, which feels much closer to human contact than the vibrate or beep of a phone.

Jess Cartner-Morley’s Apple Watch with its ‘Milanese loop’ stainless steel bracelet strap. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

And you know how you can often recognise friends by the distinctive way they knock on your door? Between Apple watches you can send tapped-out messages, should you wish. (The watch-to-watch communication of heartbeats and taps is a smart marketing ploy: first you want an Apple watch, and then having got one you want all your friends to have one too.)

The watch I am trialling has a “Milanese loop” bracelet strap, a fine-mesh magnetised stainless steel. The watch comes in a 38mm or a 42mm size, and I have opted for the smaller. (The bigger is only really an option for a man’s wrist, I think.) This watch would cost £559, making it a mid-priced option, in between the rubberised “sport” watches (which start at £299) and the premium versions. (I met with Paul Deneve, vice president of special projects at Apple last week, and tried on his watch, which is gold with a navy leather strap. I looked it up; it’s £12,000.)

Having chosen the size and strap, the next key style decision is which clock face to display. Pharrell Williams and Katy Perry both chose the Mickey Mouse option. (The things one learns from Instagram these days.) There is a butterfly, but I’m a bit put off by the idea that this is The One For Girls. So far I’m dithering between the floating jellyfish, and the phases of the moon. (Like I said: this does not seem to me a piece of kit aimed at those of a rigidly utilitarian mindset.)

But how the watch looks on your wrist is not the most important way it affects your style. The most significant change in your appearance is that you spend less time holding your iPhone in front of your face. That gauche, phone-zombie stance is fast becoming the pose that defines this decade. Appraising the functionality of the phone is not my remit – I’m all about Is It Cool; Do We Want One? – but the fact that it steers you away from looking at your phone will have an impact on how you look. Looking at your own wrist is different to looking at a standalone black box, partly because looking at a watch has a history that predates the digital era. You can’t write emails or tweets on the watch (there’s no keyboard) but you can read your inbox, send dictated or emoji responses to messages, even answer phone calls, all without getting your phone out of your bag. What’s more – and this was the most exciting part, for me – the watch distanced me from that modern comfort-blanket thing of endlessly twiddling with your phone. Walking down the street, I left my phone in my bag, knowing my watch would buzz if any of my besties called; in that awkward lift moment, I had a quick look at the weather.

Beyoncé with her gold Apple watch. Photograph: beyonce.com

Having your gadget attached to your actual person has its perils. A fashion-industry friend, who will remain nameless because she’s a Member of the British Empire and the Queen might take a dim view of such smutty talk, was horrified by the idea of calls flashing up on your wrist. “What if your dad calls when you’re having sex? What if he FaceTimes? Yuck!” (In fact, this calls for the “Full Palm”: a hand placed over a ringing watch will silence it.)

Katy Perry’s ‘Mickey Mouse’ Apple Watch. Photograph: Instagram

I already have a watch that I love. It’s a 1960s Longines that belonged to a great-great uncle, and after 50 years it still works perfectly. Taking that off in favour of this – with all the built-in obsolescence of this kind of technology – feels like a strange sort of progress. But then, in the eyes of pretty much anyone under 30, the wristwatch itself was obsolete until this week. And while I love my real watch, I can’t say I’ve ever spent as much time gazing at my wrist as I have today. What’s more, I haven’t looked at my phone for an hour.

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