Last year, everyone seemed to learn the French word for ‘bathtub.’ And not because our DuoLingo lessons were paying off. No, “Baignoire” became le mot du jour because it’s the name of Cartier’s hottest watch right now.
You know the one. It’s got a white dial punctuated by Cartier’s classic black Roman numerals, blued-steel sword-shaped hands, and a blue sapphire-set winding crown, but with a twist: an oval-shaped case. Sometimes the watch is set on a gold bracelet (or more recently, on a bangle), sometimes it’s on a strap and… It’s even been on a necklace. Tyler, the Creator wore one on-stage at Austin City Limits (a few months after he stole our hearts with his Cartier Crash); a gold-braceleted Baignoire popped up on Emma Chamberlain's wrist (before she signed on as a Cartier brand ambassador) and Kendall Jenner’s, a styling choice that Vogue UK declared apt for someone like Jenner, “who is trying to forge her own path in a crowd of It-girls cycling through trends like there’s no tomorrow.” The more it began to surface, there emerged the TikTok explainer videos labeling the Baignoire the next big thing, fueled only by the fire of its cameo in the SS23 Aimé Leon Dore lookbook.
“There were definitely a few too many times when I’ve been at a party recently and noticed, like, ten people were wearing this watch,” says Flynn McGarry, a 25-year old chef based in New York who bought his Baignoire in the summer of 2020. Back then, a mere four years ago, the watch was sitting in obscurity, relative to the more popular Cartier offerings, and McGarry was able to scoop one up for $1,300 off TheRealReal. That, compared to the $5,000 that similar models (or just under $10k, for the more coveted) can fetch on the secondary market today, was a steal.
The arc of the Baignoire is surprising even to the Baignoire lovers who bought theirs long ago, who loved them despite the non-attention they attracted – and in fact, loved them because they went unnoticed by anyone other than more in-the-weeds Cartier enthusiasts. This redoubled interest in, and downright virality of, the Baignoire is not exactly shocking but, well, something like it. “The Baignoire has become an IYKYK status symbol in the fashion world, one that I’ve loved for years,” says Nikki Ogunnaike, Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire. “An old boss whose style I’ve always admired quietly wore one before it became A Thing.”
Like so many of the watches in the Cartier catalog, it’s got a long, albeit slightly murky, history. It’s been said that the first iteration of the Baignoire surfaced in 1912, when Louis Cartier created it custom for the Russian Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna. In the late 1950s, production increased, and the design evolved into what we’re more familiar with today, though it was referred to simply as “oval-shaped.” It wasn’t until 1973 that Cartier officially called it the Baignoire (a nod to, depending on who you ask, fancy French bathtubs or VIP opera seats at the Palais Garnier – there is a lot of recycled myth on the internet particular to watch history). Whatever the case may have been, by then, the watch was having its first real moment.
“I remember my grandfather telling me that, apart from the JJC Tank, the Oval watch was the most popular watch sold in Cartier London in the 1960s and ‘70s,” says Francesca Cartier Brickell, the granddaughter of the late Jean-Jacques Cartier (who ran Cartier’s London branch from 1945 to 1974, hence the “JJC” qualifier of the Tank above) and the writer of The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire."
This pre-“Baignoire” Baignoire likely spiked in popularity due to its famous wearers, like French actresses Romy Schneider and Catherine Deneuve, or The Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who reportedly bought one for himself and George Harrison (twinning!). Proving a stylish choice for men and women alike, the oval-shaped watch went on to enjoy continued relevance, spotted on the wrists of everyone from Gloria Steinem to the actor James Garner (6’2” wearing a 26mm watch in 2000!) whose piece sold last spring at Phillips for nearly double its high estimate.
And then it slipped quietly into the background as other Cartiers enjoyed the spotlight (I’m thinking about Gordon Gecko aka Michael Dougles wearing his Santos during his “Greed is Good” speech, in the ‘80s, and Gwyneth Paltrow wearing her Panthère in the ‘90s). Then, the 2000s came around and everything got super-sized. “20 years ago, Jennifer Aniston was wearing a Rolex Day-Date, and everyone wanted to be Jennifer Aniston,” says Alan Bedwell, the purveyor of antiques and vintage watches known as Foundwell. “For a while, it hadn’t been common for a cool, young woman to look at a Baignoire and be like, Oh fuck, I need that. People appreciated it, but probably looked at it as… That’s my mum’s watch. They didn’t want to wear dainty, ladies Cartier dress watches, you know? They wanted something more sporty and a bit more masculine.” If you didn’t want to be Jennifer Aniston, you wanted to be Jay-Z with his gigantic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, Lindsay Lohan double-wristing big ass Rolex sports watches, or Kimora Lee Simmons backstage at Baby Phat wearing her Jacob & Co. Five Time Zone. And although the #y2k aesthetic lives rent-free on our social media/Depop feeds, the oversized watches seem to not have made it through the cracks alongside the Von Dutch and low-cut jeans. But that didn’t automatically signal the era of the Baignoire. As Bedwell puts it: “Up until quite recently, [The Baignoire] was certainly not the one that all the cool kids were wearing.”
It wasn’t until a year into working on Dimepiece, my platform dedicated to women and watches, in 2021 that anyone even bothered to mention it to me. And it was Bedwell. He’d brought one in a pouch to our first-ever meeting (a watch-y blind date). I was shocked that he was the first person to take the time to introduce me to this cute, classic yet urgently modern watch. He, in turn, was shocked that I liked it so much. In his 20 years professionally selling vintage watches, he’d only sold it to certain types of clients, which he won’t call out, but I’ll presume to be older, Upper East Side, ladies-who-lunch types.
He brought along the watch to our first meeting on a whim. He’s been a long-time Baignoire stan, and thought, maybe, I might be interested despite an overall lack of interest within the existing watch community. If you’re selling watches, the Baignoire wouldn’t have made you much money compared to bigger ticket pieces. And Baignoires rarely even make it to auction (sans provenance; Charlie Chaplin’s Baignoire also sold for double the high estimate via Sotheby’s) as they fall beneath the general threshold for live sales, which ranges anywhere from $10,000 to $20K, depending on the house. This relatively lower priced watch is not the ultra-rare, virtually unobtainable sensation that is the Cartier Crash; it’s not even the six-figure-fetching Baignoire Allongée (that’s “elongated bathtub,” in French), from whence the Crash allegedly got its shape after being mangled in a car wreck.
Even after one appeared in an Aimé Leon Dore campaign in early 2023, it failed to instantly take off. Gai Gohari, who has been dealing watches for 11 years, loans his available watches for ALD campaigns and chose the Baignoire for its simplicity and charm. He knew it, but the audience just wasn’t there yet. “It took me a while to sell that watch, you know, it was a bit of a sleeper,” says Gohari.
For me, however, it was a love at first sight those few years ago when Bedwell bashfully pulled it out of his pouch. I immediately broadcasted it to the internet via my watch Instagram account, Dimepiece, and snuck it into articles like “A Defense of Small Watches” (when small watches still needed defending).
Meanwhile, chef McGarry was on his own Baignoire journey, explaining that he bought his in 2020 looking for something with a lil’ spice. “All of my friends had Tanks, and I didn’t want what everyone else had,” said McGarry, referring to Cartier’s most iconic watch, which people like him often turn to as an alternative to the steel sports watch look. After a bit of research, he discovered the Baignoire. It had all the hallmarks Cartier lovers flock to, but, better, it was a lesser known classic that would fit his wrists, which he felt were too small to carry the 40mm+ traditionally labeled as a “men’s” watch. The Baignoire was his first luxury watch purchase.
Then, suddenly, they were everywhere.
“I used to have to think twice before I bought a Baignoire,” says Gohari. “But now I don’t. I know it’s going to sell. And the value rose, of course. Around spring 2023, it really became a hot commodity.”
Not a moment too soon, Cartier announced its re-release of the Baignoire, in March 2023, at Watches & Wonders, the world’s largest watch trade show in the motherland of Geneva, Switzerland. But with a twist to the twist! In addition to some slightly tweaked leather-strapped models, the belle of the ball was the $11,800 mini Baignoire on a gold bangle (18K yellow or rose gold). It was a watch, but it was also jewelry. “A Cartier watch blurs the boundaries between these two founding crafts and makes it possible to capture the best of both,” said the maison’s Creative Director of Jewelry & Watchmaking, Marie-Laure Cérède. “This combination resulted in the sleek and sophisticated design of the mini Baignoire.” A sophisticated design that, per the Cartier team presenting the bangles at Watches & Wonders, is to be worn casually, even stacked – a statement that nearly knocked me off my seat, considering the practice of “stacking” is terribly taboo in the ultra-conservative watch industry, as it tampers with the integrity of the timepiece.
That Cartier banked on the modern desire for a versatile, femme-forward watch like this speaks to its longtime relevancy and heightened status on the collector’s market now. This bet paid off. Before the new Baignoire bangle even hit boutiques in June last year, it commanded a months-long waitlist, entering the “allocation” conversation typically reserved for the Royal Oaks and the Daytonas of the world. Definitely not for quartz-powered ladies watches.
“This past February, we had someone reach out to us for the Baignoire Bangle in yellow gold because it’s still backordered at Cartier for six months,” says Ryan Chong, Head of Watch Operations at Bezel, an online marketplace for pre-owned luxury watches. “It also trades [on the secondary market] above retail, which not too many Cartiers do, excluding limited editions, watches like the Crash, etc. Our client was surprised to hear that.”
But this is the reality now as the watch world, which had previously moved at a glacial pace, is caught up in the roaring waves of the digital age. According to a September 2023 New York Times article headlined “Cartier's Baignoire Watch Is Having a Moment”, eBay reported “a 90 percent increase in searches for ‘Baignoire’ from April to July, compared with the same period in 2022.” And in addition to the SEO spike, the watch landed numerous magazine editorials, appearing on the wrists of two covergirls – two Emmas! – within a month: Emma Mackey for POP Magazine and Emma Corrin for L'OFFICIEL USA.
Jill Newman, an editor and journalist behind the aforementioned NYT piece, has a personal connection to the Baignoire. It was her first luxury watch purchase, made in the ‘90s, while working at Women’s Wear Daily. In the 30-odd years she’d owned it, no one had really brought it up, she says, despite her prominent position reporting on luxury. Now, of course, they do. More than comment, they covet! “It was just a phenomenon, that bangle watch!” Newman says with a hint of awe.
To some, all this coveting means the charm of the lesser-known Baignoire has worn thin. “I feel like I should sell mine,” says chef McGarry. By which he means: it’s over. The Baignoire is done. But is it?
HODINKEE style editor, Malaika Crawford (who’s typically allergic to trends), is still bullish on it, and it’s not because she was just down in Miami stacking her loaner Baignoire on Cartier’s dime. “The Baignoire bangle has set a new kind of precedent for women’s watch design,” says Crawford. “Finally a modern approach that takes contemporary tastes and trends into account!” What Malaika is getting at here is that… This is not peak Baignoire. This is only the beginning.
And if you’ve been closely following the trajectory of the industry at-large, you understand that the resurgence of the Baignoire represents a positive direction for watchmaking. It’s intentionally designed for women (yet has unisex appeal), strikes the right balance between “jewelry” and “watch”... And it’s easy to wear! This is not to be taken for granted in an industry that often prizes technical, mechanical excellence over sheer wearability.
Of course, nobody wants for the brands to succumb to every fleeting fashion trend or the ephemeral idea of “cool” – resistance to this has actually worked in the Swiss industry’s favor. But the Baignoire on a bangle, offers a glimpse into the (hopefully) near-future, where watches continue to be crafted with integrity, steeped in heritage, and yet beautifully designed to match present-day sensibilities.
