You mentioned from the market. The truth is an Apple watch is as tech, as fancy, as dressy as a very wide swath of today's fashion conscience population gets. Not much help, but you will do best if you follow your likes.
Pretty much every mechanical luxury watch can be considered a dress watch nowadays. The Casio and Apple watches are the real sports/tool watches of today. We also dress differently than many decades ago so very rarely will a "sports" mechanical watch look out of place, even when fully suited.
Am looking at 50 s gold geneves - lovely things
"First understand the rules. Then break them"
Imagine a black tie event. Nice dinner location. Sharp looks everywhere. And then you wear a Ploprof as your "dress watch". That would be the kind of person I would like to talk to over drinks : ) That said, I am not that person and I do anyway have too small wrists for the PloProf. My kind of dress watch would be the Aqua Terra or the Globemaster. But that JLC looks absolutely gorgeous. Depends on personality, style and what you like. I think dive watches are nice with a suit, a Sub or a SMP for example.
I have a 1959 Geneve in stainless steel with rose gold dial accents. They are beautiful watches.
In my opinion the whole "dress watch" thing is really just personal taste these days. I certainly would not hesitate to wear my rose gold Lemania with jeans or a Seamaster Professional with a suit. Unless you're trying to impress someone with your Rolex President, most people see watches as a commodity, if they even wear them at all.
So whatever you have picked out for your "vintage" is likely close to "dress" anyways.
