With this in mind, smart-thinking watch companies have been shaving references from their collections, many of them by more than half compared to a decade ago. ‘Economies of scale’ seems too prosaic for what I’m describing here – nevertheless, in mechanical watches as elsewhere, it is simply better business to focus production on your most popular models. This isn’t the only explanation for our buying habits, though. Sticking with watches, the shrinking of product ranges also indicates what we’re looking for our watches to do these days. For many, the brief at the start of a watch search is Tolkien-esque: one watch to rule them all. We want a watch we can wear all day and all night, no matter what we’re up to. Given advances in design, engineering and fashion’s softer approach to formality, the finest watch brands now serve up some fabulous one-watch watches.

This brings me neatly to Vacheron Constantin and its Overseas, the luxury sports watch currently celebrated in Harrods’ Knightsbridge windows. Introduced in 1996 and now into its third design generation, the Overseas is one of the finest examples of the one-watch trend. Even in everyday stainless steel and loaded with a time-and-date-only automatic movement, it’s got the ‘beach to boardroom’ thing down pat.

In 1977, Vacheron Constantin introduced the 222, so-called to denote the company’s 222nd anniversary. Designed by a young Jorg Hysek (who would later work for TAG Heuer and Breguet, among others), it was condemned to a relatively short life, disappearing by the mid-1980s as international interest in mechanical watchmaking nosedived. It recovered a decade later, prompting the brand to introduce the Overseas, a piece that carried over some of the 222’s muscular, angular, slightly left-field profile – and is now the beating heart of Vacheron Constantin’s collection. And the brand continues to experiment with it. At Watches and Wonders Geneva 2023, it announced four new pieces in either steel or pink gold measuring 34.5mm and 35mm (the larger to accommodate diamonds), smaller than the Overseas’ 41mm standard, but no less captivating.

The conundrum in them, if there is one, was the brand’s – and in protecting the design while distilling it so much. “While creating the new sizes, we had to maintain the global aesthetics and proportions of the existing 41mm model, particularly considering the thickness of the timepiece, which almost always becomes more apparent when the case diameter is reduced,” recalls Selmoni. “We decided to use a smaller automatic movement compared to the one fitted in the 41mm model. It then became possible to design an elegant and well-balanced timepiece, without losing the functionalities of the 41mm model.”

In the flesh, the new pieces carry all the gravitas of those larger models, despite being thinner as well as smaller. They’re every bit as exquisitely finished, too – another fil rouge that ties the Overseas family together, and the family to Vacheron Constantin’s entire model catalogue.

Indeed, as Selmoni says, the Overseas may be a luxury sports watch (the new pieces are 150-metres water-resistant), but it is also deliciously refined, carrying all the hallmarks of an obsessive mechanical watchmaker. “The Overseas collection offers contemporary aesthetics, modern features and extra special attention to detail. Take the chamfered bar of the tourbillon in our Overseas Tourbillon,” he says. “It demands more than 12 hours of work by our artisans.”

The addition to the line this year of those smaller models, and of the shimmering blue-dialled Overseas Moon Phase Retrograde Date, proves not how much design and engineering talent Vacheron Constantin has at its disposal, but also just how universal the Overseas has become. It is a totem of one-watch watch culture. In other words, all the watch you might ever need.