Horological Meandering

jmpTT
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It’s an issue of marketing

I’ve been a watch snob, sure. It’s natural to hold some of these beliefs at some point, since these viewpoints will originate from the industry’s own marketing. Through marketing, you’ll discover the brands and the heritage and the prestige well before you discover the people behind the brands and this will lead to a lot of the snobbish beliefs.

Though I do think it’s worth discussing women and watchmaking. Ladies mechanical watches have definitely experienced a resurgence, but, until recently, the emphasis with ladies watches was on iconic designs, gem-setting and the arts. I don’t enjoy strapping on a 45 mm wrist monster, so I’d expect many of the men’s watches remain uncomfortable or awkward on most ladies wrists. I mean if you have a typical ladies wrist and want a comfortable split seconds chronograph, your best choice is a Patek 5959. Mechanically, implementing the same complications in half the volume is expensive. It’s expected that ladies watches will be less complicated and will remain that way for as long as women do not want to strap clocks on to their wrists. If you look in display cases in the boutiques, you can see the industry is moving away from the narrow belief that women don’t appreciate mechanical watches, but at a given price point they’ll typically be less complicated and a bit more bejewelled, as the engineering costs pushes the watches in this direction.

If marketing moves away from emphasizing the heritage and the past to emphasizing the living talent and the present, we’ll see a greater appreciation for the talented women in watchmaking.

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