Watches are like pairs of shoes: one is not enough. Just as you wouldn’t wear your flip-flops for a night at the opera, you shouldn’t strap on a dress watch for a day at the beach. Luckily, when it comes to looking precisely comme il faut, time is on your side (or at least timepieces are). Watch companies are offering a treasure trove of feminine riches tailored for whatever mode, or mood, you’re in.
Women’s Active Lifestyle Watches
The sports craze: It brought us spandex bike shorts, $200 sneakers and plastic water bottles with pop-up tops. On a brighter note, it’s also brough us an unlimited supply of good-looking sports watches in every size, color and style. What’s new in women’s sweat-set timers? Gem lovers will be glad to know that sports watch manufacturers haven’t lost their passion for sparkle. In the few years that diamonds began appearing on sports watches, a one-time oddity has become a watch-store staple. Now diamonds are being joined by colored gems, sapphires in particular, in an array of pastel colors as enticing as an Italian water ice after a seaside jog.
Rubber watchstraps are a natural for sports watches; they resist water and are supple and hence comfortable to wear while whacking a tennis or golf ball. They’ve recently become fashion statements as well, no longer plain, black and starkly utilitarian (think Dad’s quartz digital watch from 20 years ago) but available in a rainbow of colors, often matching the watches dial. Patek Philippe offers its diamond-studded Aquanaut Luce, a quartz-powered, water resistant sports model, with dials and matching rubber watchstraps in eight colors.
This year’s most popular sports watch hue is white. It’s not just for summer; it looks as good on a ski slope as at the beach. An avalanche of watch companies have brought out watches with snow-white dials and white watchstraps, made of leather, rubber or ceramic, an increasingly important sports watch material. Hublot, for example, has a white rubber-strap-and-dial women’s watch version of its Big Bang watches. One model, the Aspen, also has a white ceramic case. Like a host of other women’s sport models, Hublot’s are chronographs, i.e., watches that measure elapsed time. These sprang onto the women’s watch scene several years ago and are getting more popular year-by-year.
Some of the newest women’s sport watches are, like the Aquanaut Luce and women’s Big Bang models, gussied-up versions of popular men’s styles. Audemars Piquet offers several women’s versions of the Royal Oak watch, its famous men’s sport watch introduced in 1972. Sports watch specialist TAG Heuer says that from now on nearly all of its women’s sports watches will be modeled on its men’s styles. This year it introduced a new white-watch-strapped, female-friendly version of its Tiger Woods endorsed Professional Golf Watch. Like the original black-watch-strapped model, it’s lightweight (thanks in part to its titanium case) and thin, and designed not to interfere with your golf swing.
Watches For Worktime
More Wind-Ups For Women
If you’re one of those rare women who prefer mechanical watches to quartz ones, your time has come. This year has produced a bumper crop of mechanical women’s watches, more than at any time since the quartz watch pushed automatic and manual-wind watches to near extinction in the 1980s. The new women’s mechanical watches come in every style, from the sportiest chronographs to the most gem-intensive jewelry watches. One new touch: watch companies are incorporating transparent case backs and, occasionally, small windows on the watch dial so that the watches’ owners can admire the movements inside (such windows have been a popular feature among men’s watches for years). A short list of watch companies that have introduced new mechanical women’s watches this year: Patek Philippe, Blancpain, Audemars Piguet, Zenith, Hublot, Parmigiani Fleurier, Maurice Lacroix, Jaquet Droz, Piaget and Montblanc. Will women go for these new old-time watches? For a generation, women have, in general, preferred the convenience of quartz watches. But many watch companies think it’s just a matter of time until women catch the mechanical watch bug.
Your work watch should do more than help you count the hours until retirement. Like your turquoise colored, Italian leather hobo handbag, it should send a message: that you’re assertive, self-confident, in short, just the woman to get the job done. Today’s watches do just that. First of all, they’re big. The trend that began several years ago in Europe, where women, especially Italian women, began wearing super-sized watches, is now taking off in America. How big is big? Women’s watches routinely exceed sizes that not long ago were standards for men’s watches, say 32 mm or 33 mm in diameter. For some women, anything less than 38 mm is simply too demure.
Secondly, they’re loaded with eye-catching diamonds. Not long ago, wearing a diamond watch to the office was as strange as wearing one to the beach. No more: diamond watches are now popular alpha-female symbols of professional prowess. Despite their glitter, they needn’t be garish; more and more watch companies are making styles that will lend your look some spark without conjuring up images of Elizabeth Taylor posing for a White Diamonds perfume ad. They include the Tissot T-Wave, which has rows of small diamonds on either side of the square case, and the Ebel Brasilia, a rectangle watch that, in one rendition, has diamonds on each side of the case and dotting the dial. On the other hand, there are plenty of splashy new bling watches with double-digit carat weights if you really want to start a buzz in the coffee room.
Today’s work-ready styles come in a range of flamboyant, attention getting colors. This year, one of the hottest is a hue you might not think of as trendy: brown. Not school-marm, sensible-shoe brown, but a rich vibrant color, or rather range of colors, from toffee to bittersweet, that pack as much of a wallop as a double espresso with cappuccino chaser. These hues stand out, but don’t shout, so they’re perfect for work. And they go with earth tones, plus whites, black and much else besides. All types of materials, not just leather, are being used for brown watchstraps, which are often paired with brown dials. Often more than one shade of brown appears on the same watch (dark brown watchstrap with a light brown dial, for instance). Some watch companies even adore bezels with brown diamonds. But de Grisogono pushes the trend to the limit, using a treatment on some of its gold cases that gives them a brown cast.
One more color note: pink gold, also called rose gold, is finally stepping onto the women’s watch scene. We say “finally” because it hit the men’s market big time years ago. Women have been reluctant converts though, presumably because they’ve been afraid it would clash with their yellow-gold jewelry. That objection now seems to be falling by the wayside. The Cartier new La Dona comes in rose gold (it’s also available in yellow and white gold), as does the Patek Philippe Gondola Gemma and a host of other right-for-work models.
Women’s Evening Watches
It used to be easy to recognize women’s evening watches: they were the ones with the diamonds on them. But now that diamonds are as plentiful during the day as sunlight is, after-dark watches need additional glitz. To the delight of all who like their watches glittery, fanciful and full of surprises, the newest party-time watches have plenty of tricks up their sleeves.
They include fancy shapes – when the sun goes down, a bevy of dreamy shapes emerge: elongated ovals, dramatically attenuated rectangles and tonneau shapes that arch seductively around the wrist. In their most glamorous renditions, they’re covered lug to lug with baguette or pave-set round diamonds, like the well-named Dream from Audemars Piguet, which has pave diamonds blanketing its curved tonneau case.
Dials are also dressing up for nighttime. That’s when you’re most likely to see engraved patterns, exotic materials (like coral, which Concord is using on new after-dark versions of its Saratoga model), large, art deco inspired numerals, shimmery finishes and rich colors. Patek Philippe’s new Calatrava for women has a navy blue dial with an engine-turned, wave-like pattern covered with layers of blue lacquer. If navy doesn’t match the dinner suit in your closet, head for the mall; you’re supposed to buy your clothes to match a watch like this, not vice versa.
Nighttime brings out a sense of playfulness in some watches. A few can hide their dials, disguising themselves as bracelets. The case of Van Cleef & Arpel’s Secret watch is kept in a compartment until the wearer pulls it out, like a tiny drawer, to check the time. Cartier has a new watch, shaped like a crocodile, whose dial is hidden in the reptile’s mouth. And Gucci is offering a lavish, diamond-laden, white-gold version of its new Twirl watch (non-diamond, steel-cased versions are also available) that lets you turn the watch case over if you’d rather not be bothered with the time. Watchstraps and metal watch bracelets have special evening guises, too. Many gold or steel watch bracelets are set with diamonds. Satin watchstraps are popular for evening, too. They’re rather fragile and difficult to clean, so some companies are now substituting synthetic fabrics that have a satin-like sheen but are more durable. And, believe it or not, flat rubber watchstraps (no tire tread-like patterns, like those on some rubber sports watch straps) are also showing up on evening watches. They have a matte, fabric-like surface that makes them as dressy as satin.
You’ve got plenty of evening-watch options, but remember one thing: night is no time to be retiring. With so many sparkling diva-wear watches to choose from, your only question is how glam you want to go.
