“A watch is not a world of its own; it is a series of worlds.”

Time Out of Mind

From the Met Gala in New York to the factories in Switzerland, AIR MAIL’s horological expert believes that the sum of all human achievement can be found in watches

By Nicholas Foulkes

I do not remember exactly when it became important to know how attendees at the Met Gala were able to tell the time. But over the last five or six years, the watches on display here have integrated themselves into the news cycle around the Oscars of the Upper East Side.

This year, even before all the attendees had reached their tables, wrist-watching social-media feeds, watch-spotting Web sites, and brand P.R. departments had cranked into action, making sure this vital news was ready for consumption when the world awoke.