Women like watches, too. Yeah, so, this isn't breaking news if you have a brain, but it's still gotta be said from time to time. It wasn't that long ago that watch culture, like many other luxury spheres, was a boy's club.
And, obviously, women have been breaking watch world barriers for years — woman-founded timepiece blog Dimepiece is nearly five years old, for crying out loud — so it's better to normalize women-designed luxury watches than tokenize. Is anyone really that surprised they exist or that they are good?
But there are too many clear examples to be ignored. Today's women-designed luxury watch collabs are not merely good — they're some of the best-looking timepieces in the watch biz.
Bulgari recently revealed a second collaboration with superstar BLACKPINK member Lisa, yielding a diamond-studded steel and gold Bulgari Bulgari watch with a tasteful tile-patterned face; Victoria Beckham's debut Breitling partnership birthed a limited edition Chronomat Automatic 36 with face colors that complement the British designer's Spring/Summer 2024 line; couture designer and Ralph & Russo founder Tamara Ralph created a gorgeous Royal Oak Concept with a jaw-dropping dimensional face.
They may span pricepoints and style but the design philosophy unites them all.
That is to say, Lisa, Beckham, and Ralph all created watches unique to their own tastes — crisply feminine, approachably elegant, and adventurously recherché, respectively — that uniformly stand tall above most of today's fancy watch collabs.
It's surprisingly novel to be presented with high-end watches that feel like an extension of the collaborator. And, notably, only Lisa's Bulgari is technically gendered as a "women's watch" — these timepieces for everyone (or at least whoever can afford them).
Consider the alternatives.
Watches shaped by artists and recolored by musicians are effectively de rigueur. We've all seen these before and most are fancy pieces of wrist candy that merely bear famous dudes' names.
The difference is that these women created these luxury timepieces with identities. Their watches are high-end but humanized.
This is something that's come up time and time again in discussions of women in watch culture.
This is not really something I have any authority to speak on but even a dude like myself — a total watch neophyte to boot! — can understand the very personal appeal of, say, EmRata's favorite Rolex.
And that's all it is, really.
The women leading the luxury watch collab pack aren't doing so because necessarily they're women. But perhaps that perspective has allowed them to do what so many of their collaborative peers have not: infuse their watches with personality.
