It would be an overstatement to say that the two-tone watch is having a moment ? steel-and-gold timepieces are not nearly as ubiquitous as, for example, blue-dial-blue-strap combos in today?s market? but certainly you can find more of them, from a greater variety of brands, than you could just a few years ago. Steel-and-gold occupies a special middle ground between understated luxury and ostentation, melding the elegance of the precious metal with the utilitarian robustness of its more industrial counterpart.

The two-tone look is especially suitable for the denizens of the timepiece realm we have come to refer to as ?luxury sport? ? an oft-employed but rarely specified term that generally means that the owner is wealthy enough to rock an expensive timepiece but still wants that timepiece to be something he can bang around a little bit. The Vacheron Constantin Overseas ? based on the classic “222” model from the 1970s, widely regarded as the golden age of “sport luxury” watches; and revived and redesigned in a big way back in 2016 ? is a prime example, and fittingly, among its many incarnations is a two-tone steel-and-gold, three-hand-date model, which I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days with, courtesy of the brand. The first thing you?ll most likely notice is that distinctive bezel, which the brand?s press materials call ?six-sided,? but which is actually round rather than hexagonal, albeit punctuated by six notches ? more specificall...