When it comes to wearing a wristwatch with either white tie or black tie, I honestly have to say I struggle to find any real substance in the most often raised objections to the practice. The notion of not giving offense to one's host by appearing to disdain time is superficially plausible, but factually absurd. These days, the practice of staring at one's phone has become so ubiquitous, and is so much more genuinely rude, that looking at a wristwatch can't seem anything more than innocuous, or so it seems to me.

The idea that one should not do it because it is against the rules ignores the fact that the rules have been mutable over time in any event, and that in the case of the dinner jacket, one is dealing with a semi-formal, rather than formal code, which is by definition more elastic. The idea that you shouldn't do it because it looks bad is disposed of with one glance at Mr. Fred Astaire up above, who is wearing full-on white tie with top hat – and I challenge anyone reading this to look as good without a wristwatch as he does with one on. (The aforementioned Benedict Cumberbatch, by the way, was photographed wearing a pocket watch with white tie at the Met Costume Institute gala, and some people think that isn't correct – that it's much more an interruption of the suspension of time you're meant to be experiencing at the ball to pull out a pocket watch than it is to discreetly check your wristwatch).