DOWN sizing

The big idea: watches are getting smaller. Forget about an old-fashioned gender categorisation and consider instead more refined proportions for the wrist.

- GORDON NG

Trends are cyclical-and so it is with watches, a field where we are seeing a host of changes in tastes and attitudes. Since the 2000s, timepieces have grown and grown. As an industry certainly: what was a miraculous breakthrough in 2000 of CHF10 billion has now ballooned to a 2023 estimate of nearly CHF27 billion for Swiss-made watch exports. But the arching trend in those 201 years has been size and heft, particularly bold and large designs. In short: where luxury watches are concerned, both appetite and literal size has grown.

But that's set to change with a rising undercurrent of taste for diminutive timepieces. Case in point: the host of male celebrities who have been rocking up to red carpets and major events sporting women's timepieces. Timothée Chalamet perhaps the platinum matinee idol of our times-has a penchant, as a Cartier ambassador, for smaller Panthères and Crash references. Or consider any of the multitude of celebrities who have worn an Omega to an awards show recently. Rising star Barry Keoghan, for example, leans particularly in favour of the elegantly sized Seamaster Aqua Terras.

This preference for leaner, smaller watches coincides with a number of arching style and cultural trends. The leading thought is that of subtler, more thoughtful luxuries that suit a postpandemic zeitgeist. The creative spirit of today is one that yearns for occasion, for a sense of purposeful elegance that resists the doldrums of endless casual at-home days. Going out and looking chic has its place again, and that now extends to one's choices on the wrist.