To bling or not to bling

Opinion is just that, and it carries little weight when the opinion expressed is only about someone's taste. Unlike opinions based on experience, those addressing aesthetic judgement are so much hot air. Taste is personal, fundamentally harmless and – reductio ad absurdum – often nothing more controversial than, do you prefer red wine or white? So we try to be civil, and bite our tongues over trivial matters such as the superiority of dark chocolate over milk. Or do we?

Who amongst you hasn't found the vast majority of catwalk fashions to be ludicrous in the extreme? And yet they're coveted by women who, being slightly larger than a Size 3, will never wear them. But should you dare to criticise some confection that looks like a costume from Dune, you would be sneered at as a Philistine.

Watches are slightly different in that, being small and falling under the heading of 'Accessory', they can be worn by anyone, regardless of their waist measurement. So it's almost impossible to make a fool of yourself by wearing a watch deemed infra dig by one person or another. And yet the time has come to point out to those wallowing in wealth that maybe, just maybe, they need a Trinny or a Susannah to tell them where they're going wrong.

My primary whinge is about the way bling-bling watchwear has cheapened the high-end and - worse - bestowed credibility where none is deserved. At the risk of branding myself a snob along the lines of that ultra-pretentious art critic with the post-nasal drip, I feel it's time to lambast those who care more about the gems on the outside than the inside. Read no further if you're of The Guardian persuasion: this is a rant about class and social graces, and it's firmly on the side of those who, come the revolution, want everyone to eat steak, not mince.

In part, this ire is due to my absolute inability to grasp the appeal of diamonds, rubies and the like. Aside from the monetary worth and thus a touch of usefulness as a form of currency, I cannot see why non-functioning, wholly decorational fripperies are a girl's best friend. And it's no longer just the girls, as lads of every political and sexual stripe are buying into bling-bling jewellery. As I'm not a hip-hopper nor a rapper, I'm unable to explain the need for nor appeal of such excess. But it appears that we live in a time when Eighties cult figure Mr. T. is the height of taste, a veritable icon.

It wasn't always so. A half-century-or-so back, those who set the trends had breeding, style and class. The 'beautiful people' looked and dressed like the film stars of the day: Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Grace Kelly, Errol Flynn. Singers? Sinatra, Dino, Ella, Patti and Sammy oozed style.

Lest any African-American readers suggest even the slightest whiff of racism, since the Tigris-Euphrates of bling-bling happens to be dance musicians, note that the bling-bling nausea of hip-hop is NOT exclusively a 'black thing': the predominantly black musical genre of the pre-rock/soul era was jazz, and there were no more suave nor stylish individuals than Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and the King of Cool, Miles Davis. (Note: Duke and Miles wore Patek Philippes of the tasteful variety.) No, what we're suffering today knows no racial barriers. Indeed, the most flagrant violators are lily-white, with taste that makes Mr. T. look like Noel Coward.

What's happened to create this relapse? Why are today's tastemakers and trendsetters the Britneys and Poshes of this world? Since when did money mean more than panache? And why the sudden flurry of diamond-encrusted watches? Has the whole damned planet had a taste bypass? Of course, the watch companies love it. Whatever watch the customer is buying has had its retail value enhanced by a factor of 10-to-100. And that's the root of the problem: watch companies positively encourage this trend. It's pure gravy for them. So let's take it away from obvious bling-bling for a moment and try something a shade more subtle.

If there's a litmus test, it's this: If you were spending £5000 on a gold watch, would you buy one on a strap, in which case you're getting £4900's worth of watch and £100 to keep it on your wrist? Or would you buy one on a bracelet, in which case half the value is the bracelet? Let's make it even more revealing. What would you rather have, a Porsche with a Vauxhall body, or a Vauxhall with a Porsche body? Think about it.

If we were only talking about bling'd-up watches from the revered 'quality' brands, this argument would have no merit: a Lange & Sohne with a diamond bezel is still Lange & Sohne, a Girard-Perregaux encrusted in gems is still a treasure. True, you might be paying £30,000 for what is in effect a £15,000 watch, but at least it still beats with a mechanical heart of true pedigree. What's inspired this tirade is the flood of zero-heritage, negative-credibility brands springing up all over the place, to sop up the overflowing cash from the pockets of footballers and their wives, watches with pocket money quartz movements.

To make certain that I wasn't imagining things, I contacted a highly-respected watchmaker and quizzed him about quartz movements, especially their OEM prices. He confirmed that the majority – as good as they get – cost only tens of pounds, and that a manufacturer would be hard-pressed to source one for £100. So I said, what about quartz Cartiers and Pateks and the like? He told me that all they could do is apply 'finissage', make them look a bit better, improve some parts, but they'd still be worth less than a few hundred quid. And in his opinion? The finest quartz movement you can buy comes from Swatch. And we all know what they cost.

So I wander around the Basel watch fair and I see new make after new make aimed at exploiting the lack of refinement exhibited by today's wealthy. Bogus names with the ring of Euro-authenticity. Dial styles plundered from the 1920s Vacheron and Patek catalogues, or new creations so visually rank that you can only marvel at the vulgarity. And then you find out that there's a waiting list for a £35,000, diamond-clad monstrosity with a movement not unlike the one you'd find in a £50 Fossil.

Footballers clamour for them. Their arm-candy love it, too, genuine his'n' hers bling-bling ca-ca. And yet all they had to do was take that same amount of money, turn their back on the purveyors of Cote d'Azur pimpwear and opt instead for something of lasting merit, from Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet, Breguet – whoever. They'd have still had all the bling-bling they could handle, but it would be merely a veneer covering true class. I would ask their Trinny or Susannah to remind them of an old British expression about certain things you just can't polish.