It’s about time
A crop of new collections prove that Switzerland is finally making watches for women with both beauty and brains. What took them so long
Bellwethers pop up in the strangest of places. Last week, sandwiched between a Radio 4 discussion on the appeal of ghost stories and an item on people living with dementia was a segment on why more and more women are wearing watches.
A report – not a particularly well-researched one, I must add – had found that more women than men are wearing watches, and this formed the basis of an unlikely feature on women’s watch-buying habits. The Woman’s Hour show did have a point: more women are indeed becoming interested in wearing a decent timepiece. Not just for fashion reasons either; rather because they understand and appreciate the mechanics ticking away inside, and want something more soulful than a Michael Kors or Apple Watch on their wrists.
Previously, the only place to find this was the other half’s half of the dresser. A traditional Swiss view of a woman’s place in society is: “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” and this seems to have permeated the school of thought on watch design, with many houses thinking women want nothing more from a watch than a pink strap and some sparkliness. The excruciating notion of the “boyfriend watch” seemed like the only alternative.
But over the past few years the paradigm has started to shift. And this year, certainly, that shift bordered on seismic.
Unsurprisingly, the industry’s pre-eminent watchmaker Patek Philippe had been leading the charge since 2009, when it announced that its first-ever in-house-manufactured chronograph movement would make its debut in – shock, gasp – a women’s watch. This was the start of Patek’s Ladies First collection, which has gone on to launch haut-de-gamme complications such as a split-seconds chronograph and even a chiming minute repeater in delicately designed, diamond-set watches.
It now seems that 2014 has been the year that the rest of the industry finally caught up.
In June, Baume & Mercier launched Promesse. It was the first collection of women’s watches from this brand that didn’t feel like it had been cobbled together by designers too exhausted to do anything more than change a strap colour and plump for quartz.
This was followed swiftly by TAG Heuer reinterpreting both its motorsport-derived Carrera and butch Aquaracer for women; then Montblanc launching its Bohème, aimed squarely at young sophisticates and boasting the brand’s first-ever perpetual calendar.
All this activity culminated in the star-studded launch of IWC’s Portofino Midsize last month – a collection of women’s watches from a brand that usually prides itself on being “engineered for men”.
“Female customers specially requested this sort of watch from IWC,” reveals its CEO Georges Kern. “Lots of women don’t like a particularly girly style, which is why we’ve gone with a mid-sized design. Our existing men’s Portofino was the most versatile piece to adapt.”
The Midsize is certainly not for girls; it is for sophisticated, discerning women, as the accompanying campaign emphasises, featuring ambassadors Cate Blanchett and Chinese actress Zhou Xun channelling Marlene Dietrich in tuxedos (pictured above).
These are the sort of strong, female archetypes causing Swiss watch brands to sit up and take notice of what the fairer sex really wants when it comes to watches.
“There is an increasing demand from women for watches that combine feminine elegance with watchmaking precision – especially mechanical movements,” explains Alexander Schmiedt, Montblanc International’s managing director for watches. “When we created the new collection, we had a specific type of woman in mind: she knows who she is and what she wants. She goes beyond just external values, looks for substance.”
Which is exactly how this new crop of watches could be described. These collections may look beautiful but they also pack some serious horological clout. There is the aforementioned perpetual calendar in the Bohème range, based on the same movement as the men’s Meisterstuck Heritage perpetual calendar, while IWC’s recent launch contained two exquisitely designed complications. The overtly feminine moonphase, which, on the black dial version, is the last word in sophistication and the GMT, known as the Automatic Day and Night, which serves as a lesson to every brand in how to make a woman’s watch with diamonds that isn’t patronising.
“We find that women are very much drawn to the aesthetics of a watch,” says Sara Sandmeier, design director of Baume & Mercier and the woman charged with reinventing the round watch for Promesse. “However, in order to remain elegant and refined in the design of feminine watches, it’s important to always respect a perfect balance between the aesthetic of a watch and its function.”
It is the exploration of this balance between form and function that is generating such an intelligent crop of elegant pieces that stand proudly beside their male counterparts. Women’s own intelligence has been accruing too, thanks in no small part to the fear of sounding naïve or feeling crushingly bored when the men around the table roll up their left sleeve and play top trumps.
The Swiss have sat up and taken action. If only they could find a way to make us all look like Cate Blanchett in the process.
Laura McCreddie is editor of Eve’s Watch