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If you haven’t lived under a rock for the past few decades, then you surely know that Rolex stands for luxurious precision timekeeping, and you know that Timex is the premier name in inexpensive, reliable timekeeping. The vast area between the two, however, offers the widest selection of watches-in terms of function, fashion and price.

We’re all creatures of habit, and if one watch has served us well for years, it’s natural that we gravitate toward the same brand and design each time we purchase a new watch. If you’d like to adorn your wrist with a different type of watch, perhaps a Swiss-quartz or high-fashion watch, we offer you a cheat sheet below, to help you get up to speed quickly with the many offerings available today.

If you’ve always thought of a watch as a functional necessity, you might add a few fashionable watches to your collection of watches and bracelets. If you’ve always worn high-fashion watches, consider adding an elegant watch to your collection, perhaps one with a golden mesh band. Whatever your requirements for timekeeping and your sense of fashion, you’ll find a watch to suit your needs.

Impress Your Colleagues Watches

In the exclusive $5000-$2,000,000 range, you’ll find a variety of luxury watches with names that escape the average man or woman on the street, and you won’t find any of these online. Does Vacheron Constantin or Blancpain ring a bell?

Perception is everything, and a genuine Rolex brands you a person of discerning taste. If you live in New York City, you might be surprised to learn that you can buy a Rolex from a bona fide jeweler, most likely in the 10021 zip code. Forget all the hype about Rolex watches: people buy them for one reason. They are the most recognized status symbols in watches—everyone has heard of a Rolex, and a diamond and gold Rolex remains out of most everyone’s price range.

Rolex watches are the most popular, and ownership is not a requirement for popularity. It might surprise you to learn that Rolex watches are not THE most accurate. It is unlikely that they take a year to make, and their resale value is of little importance to their buyers. Ah, Madison Avenue strikes again. Still, a Rolex watch is a fine watch and an investment in time. Give me status; give me a Rolex.

Other fine high-end watches include Cartier and Omega.

Affordable Treats

If you’re a mere mortal with a penchant for arriving at your destination in style at the prescribed time (perhaps your job depends upon it), your idea of a good watch probably resides in the $100-500 range, and maybe even toward the lower end of that scale. You know the names Seiko, Swiss Army, Pulsar, and Citizen—just to name a few. The brands available in this price range offer a wide selection of choices ranging from simple and elegant leather bands, to mesh and link bands. You’ll find analog and digital displays, timers, calendar displays, water-resistance, etc. in this price range. In fact, this price range offers the widest variety in terms of elegance, precision time keeping, and fashion choices. You can select from a number of watches using Swiss-quartz movements in this price range.

For the Fun of it

You’ll find everything from designer-of-the-moment watches to household names such as Swatch and Fossil in the below-$100 range. The Fossil collections feature casual and dress watches in a dizzying array of choices, and provide dependable service as well. Fossil offers a lot of bang for the buck—fashion, dependability, variety.

Starting at $40, Swatch offers the most in up-to-the-minute throwaway watch fashion. The company began late in the 20th century as a consortium of Swiss watchmakers and worldwide graphical designers with one goal: to resurrect the analog watch. Swatch has come a long way since those days, and one of their newer creations, the Skin Diamond watch, can set you back a cool $2000. Of course, you won’t run into yourself coming and going if you sport this new status symbol. The rest of us can settle with wearing our moods on our wrists.

And, last but certainly not least—depending on your current age—this category satisfies the Abercrombie-and-Fitch, Top 40 crowd with an assortment of watches from the king of the teen designers, Tommy Hilfiger himself.

Whatever your pleasure in marking time, find it, get it, own it, wear it. Mere mortals like us can browse and purchase the watches of our choice right here—online

For many, the average men’s shirt is simply a garment of utility – one that is worn by men across the world for reasons of function and not necessarily fashion. But this attitude belies the hundreds of years of trends in men’s shirts. From the typical collarless shirts with billowing sleeves worn by classical painters to the modern formal button-down shirt, men’s shirts have captured the imaginations of both designers and ordinary men for generations. In the twentieth century in particular, a range of different shirt styles have proved popular with men of all ages.

One of the most important developments in men’s shirts over the last hundred years, for example, has been the invention of the polo shirt. The polo shirt, or ‘tennis shirt’, was created by legendary French tennis player Rene Lacoste in 1929 as an alternative to the stiff dress shirts and ties typical of tennis attire at the time. In the 1960s, Ralph Lauren propelled the polo shirt to new heights as a prominent item in his ‘Polo’ collection; and since this time the polo shirt has become so popular that it is now a standard category of clothing – although it has fallen out of favour with most tennis players.

The granddad shirt has also been a long lasting trend in men’s shirts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These collarless shirts have been popular with men in warm countries for decades and have seen a variety of incarnations throughout the years. The Nehru Jacket, for instance, is a South Asian version of the modern granddad shirt that was popularised by the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s and early 1960s, and has since been prominently worn by a number of celebrities, from the likes of Sammy Davis Jr to Steven Segal. Today’s granddad shirt preys on bright colours and an ethno-bohemian vibe that appeals to a variety of men’s fashion trends – from festival clothing to smart casual summer wear.

The button-down shirt has also been one of the most influential men’s shirts in fashion history – but memories of how it was created tend to be somewhat hazy. Some fashion experts claim that the button-down collar shirt was invented by an American shirt manufacturer who was inspired by an English polo match, in which players had their collars clipped down to avoid flapping in the wind. Others say that button-down shirts were created in New York, when their inventor (as yet anonymous) attached his collar to his shirt with buttons in a fit of annoyance at the oncoming wind.

But whatever the origin of the button-down shirt, its impact on the men’s shirt industry has been historic, as button down shirts are now worn in both formal and casual contexts. Today, short-sleeved men’s shirts are often worn with skinny jeans, large belts and tailored waistcoats for a fresh and informal look that still exudes smart chic. And with men’s shirts available in a variety of colours – from grey to raspberry – and in a variety of floral and striped patterns, it’s clear that evolving trends in men’s fashion are far from over.