When I was about to marry my beloved wife, I wanted to treat myself with a nice watch. It should be a) not too expensive and b) a watch my wife could and would wear, too. Just around that time, Nomos launched the Club Campus, intended for (as the name suggests) special occasions such as graduations of children – or maybe a wedding. The closed case back was designed to be engraved, and the engraving was even included in the price. (Today you can also opt for a glass case back.) So the Nomos Club Campus fitted like “butt on bucket” as we say in German (not sure if this literal translation works …). I really love this watch, but I nearly forgot to review it here, because I never wear it – the last paragraph explains why.

The Nomos Club Campus is a slim, manual wound, “dress” watch, following the Nomos design vocabulary. What makes it special – not only in the Nomos range but generally – is the “reverse california” dial: the four and the eight are executed as roman numerals, the ten, twelve and two as arabic numbers. Some may find this – quite rightly – quirky, I think it’s plain great. And I also just love the bright orange second hand! As a rule, I like applied indexes. But on the Club Campus this would IMHO destroy the design idea of “everything is flat”. Not just the case, also the hands and the silver plated dial support an impression of a very slim watch. And with only 8.5 mm height and a diameter of 38.5 mm – it qualifies as a dress watch. On the other hand, with enough lume and a water resistance of 10 bar, it is versatile enough to be worn everywhere and anytime. To be able to make the watch that slim, Nomos has opted for a manual movement. While this is perfectly ok for me, Club Campus owners do not benefit from Nomos proprietary technologies like the in-house escapement. Nomos generally pays a lot of attention to details. This is true here, too: the numerals and indexes are printed in a light blue which is surrounded by a very thin red line, which you may not notice at first sight. Also nearly all Nomos watches have kind of “unusual” (at least for my eyes) lugs. The Club Campus is comparatively conservative in this aspect. However, the lugs are quite long, so that there is quite a gap between the strap and the case.

My wife used to go for cheap plastic quartz watches in different colours (from a brand called O-bag), which she selected to match her outfit. In order to let her wear the Club Campus occasionally, I got her a short light blue strap. Once I attached that to the watch, she hijacked it, wearing it constantly on all occasions – in the office, while hiking, even for sports and on the beach. And I have never worn my personalised watch ever since.