It’s about time, cocktail time
What’s old is new again and small watches are officially making a comeback. From evening watches to cocktail watches to dress watches, the small watch is having its time in the sun… again. If the daily posts of the Cartier “Crash” on Instagram were a leading indicator, it was a fully formed trend by the 2024 Met Gala.
image: (Jeff Goldblum’s Tiffany cocktail watch, Met Gala 2024) vogue.com
A brief history, if you will
Like so many things in life, fashion and trends are cyclical. Cocktail and evening watches had their heyday in the early 1900’s and traditionally adorned the arms of women at the time. Like jewelry, they were a way to show off unique taste, wealth or a combination of both. Most people would have had to put on their strongest “coke bottle” reading glasses to see the time on these watches, especially in the low glow of 1920’s incandescent bulbs.
image: (Audemars Piguet cocktail watch) analogshift.com
Fast forward to 1960’s and you had dress watches like the Patek Philippe “Golden Ellipse” or the 1970’s and the Piaget “Polo.” While not technically cocktail watches in the truest sense of the word, these were small, elegant, almost impractical watches, leaning more towards jewelry than functional tool. These watches were largely overshadowed by the chronographs of the time, purpose built watches like the Omega Speedmaster, Rolex Daytona, Heuer Autavia, and Zenith El Primero. The 1969 moon landing sealed the fate (destiny?) of the Speedmaster “Moonwatch” for the next 50 years and both mechanical and quartz tool watches - that is, “functional” watches - continued to dominate watch sales.
What’s old is new again
I’ll dive into this a bit deeper as a future topic, but suffice it to say, fashion (yes, watches are now fashion) is highly cyclical. As with many other things in our collective culture, credit rap artists for again leading the way on this trend (see: Tyler the Creator publicly wearing his Crash in 2021).
image: (Tyler the Creator’s Cartier Crash on stage) gq.co.uk
Creating something novel in fashion, be it clothing, shoes, or accessories, is virtually impossible in 2024. It’s all been done. Material culture is moving at a blistering pace in the 2020’s. R&D is expensive and it takes time to bring something functional like a new watch to market. So what do watchmakers (smartly) do? Reissue from the archives, of course. I wish Longines would do a bit more opening of archives, but I digress.
The Patek Phillipe Golden Ellipse and Piaget Polo were both just re-released, slightly updated. Watches like the Panthère de Cartier that border cocktail watch and evening watch depending on the model, are making a comeback in the eyes of consumers and watch YouTubers alike.
Small watches are here to stay, at least for a while.
The watch market
If you listen to those in the business of actually selling watches, they’ll tell you that, generally speaking, watches are not investments. Yes, there are certain watches that if you’re lucky enough to get your hands on, you could sell for a sizeable profit, but those are often already reserved for the wealthy and popular among us.
The watch market has been cooling off from the highs of the pandemic-driven “silly season” (as it’s known in Formula 1 parlance). It doesn’t take a Nobel prize winning economist to understand that this trend follows a bit of an inverse in the stock market which has been soaring.
image: (past two years’ of watch prices) watchcharts.com
Watchmakers have certainly known this day would come and have been planning for new releases or re-releases to entice the watch buying public to continue their purchasing streak. That, combined with our collective appetite for what’s “new” is driving a resurgence in small watches that do little more than look amazing telling the time. This is a trend that I can fully get behind.
Let’s reserve the dinner plates for the table.