Ernest watch with leopard print on cream background

Can you still read a leopard-print dial?

Fair question with any printed face, and the answer rests on contrast. The numerals are painted white and sit clear of the darker markings, so the hour stays readable at a glance. Around them the rhinestone-set bezel draws a bright line and keeps the print from running on unbroken. A slim red-tipped hand gives the eye something to follow.

A band of flat links that widens over your hand

The band is built from flat links that stretch, wide ones, set on a tension that gives as you push your hand through, then closes again above the wrist bone. There is no clasp to fasten and nothing to size, which matters if you take a watch off several times a day. The same idea runs through every watch built on a band of jointed flat links, though the print changes from one dial to the next.

Wearing an animal print watch with plain clothes

Leopard reads best when nothing else competes with it. A cream jumper, straight indigo denim, a camel coat, and the wrist becomes the one busy point in the outfit. Cream rather than tan also keeps the print light against a pale wardrobe. If you would rather save the pattern for occasional wear, the plainer dials elsewhere in the range, cover the same ground more quietly.

Ernest leopard watch: what the photographs show

Bringing the stones back, and storing the band

Should the stones start to look dull, a dry soft cloth over the glass and the bezel usually brings them back: dust settles in the setting rather than on the stones themselves. Lay the watch flat afterwards instead of coiling it, so the links stay in line and the band keeps its original pull.