Editor’s Letter
Sales of watches have been under a cloud over the past two years due to declining demand. But there’s one luminous spot to be found in the gloom: women’s watches. While men’s timepieces have grown in size and complication and hogged the conversation, women’s watches, long the Cinderella, have sometimes seemed an afterthought, often merely a man’s watch with colour supplanting complication, diamonds the shortcut to dazzle. Not any more. This is now a sector producing remarkable pieces designed from the outset with women in mind. These are watches that punch above their weight when it comes to not only lustre and luxe, but also mechanical ingenuity, which used to be considered the exclusive province of masculine pieces.
It didn’t happen overnight, and wouldn’t have happened at all if it hadn’t been for the entry of fashion brands into the field. Take a bow names such as Dior and Chanel, the latter celebrating 30 years of watchmaking this year with our cover watch, its first women’s complication created completely in-house.
Such activity completes a circle, given the very first wristwatches were those created for women in the 1800s. Women had no pockets to accommodate the bulky timers that men, back then, could put in their waistcoats and continued to favour until the 1900s.
Now, as you’ll see in these pages, be it newcomers Christophe Claret or Roger Dubuis or long-time experts in luxe such as Cartier, Piaget and Van Cleef & Arpels, watchmakers have rediscovered the magic to be had in creating something special for the female wrist – pieces that are simply too brilliant to take second place to their masculine counterparts.
On the cover
Our cover watch, the Chanel Première Camellia Skeleton, showcases Chanel’s expertise in both jewellery and fine watchmaking. Coming 30 years after it first introduced a watch dedicated to women, the Première Camellia Skeleton introduces the brand’s second in-house mechanism, the Calibre 2, a one-off movement fashioned in the shape of a camellia. Three years in the making, it’s destined for the arms of women who want more than the time on their wrist. See the story and our look at Chanel’s watchmaking years.