Time Machine

Mark Cho, the co-founder of The Armoury, an international men's clothing boutique, speaks to Tatler about his love for small dials and why selling watches is important

- Amrita Katara

Mark Cho is busy on the day I meet him, working with a trio of customers in his tastefully designed men's clothing boutique The Armoury in Hong Kong's Pedder Building. Cho and his business partner Alan See founded their company in 2010 to combine their passions for handcrafted tailoring and classic personal style for men. The boutique has increased its accessibility to a discerning clientele with a store on the Upper East Side of New York, and also provides artisanal shoemaking services. Although both men are known for liking the finer things in life, Cho is particularly well regarded as something of a luxury watch connoisseur.

As we settle in to talk about Cho's passion for watches in the cigar room conveniently located a level above the store, I notice the unique Royal Oak on his wrist. "Try it on," he says as he casually unwraps it from his wrist. "I love small dials," he adds as I soak in its beauty, the unusual 33mm black dial accompanied by a dull matt bracelet with mirrored chamfers which sits heavy on the wrist.

I ask what is it about them that he loves. "It's just a personal style," he says, as the smoke from his cigar envelops him.

But he's not alone: after surveying over 1,000 people via his Instagram page about their watch preferences and wrist measurements, Cho discovered that many believe "watchmakers were making everything too big". Even people with perfectly proportionate wrists start to feel their limbs are abnormally small; he says that as a result, even when people's wrists are of ordinary size, they start to believe that they are too small. His findings were published on watch platforms such as Worn & Wound and Hodinkee, as well as in a YouTube interview with the Horological Society of New York in an attempt to raise awareness about wrist sizes.