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Given all the heritage that's riddled in watchmaking, you might assume that watches are not at the mercy of trends, but you’d be wrong. Watch trends are a thing. Timelessness can pervade – a panda-dial Rolex Daytona will forever be a grail – but every year, a new clutch of shapes, sizes and finishes drift into favour, ousting those that were breaking the internet, bank accounts (and marriages) just a year ago.
Small watches – specifically those by Cartier and Piaget – sit at the zenith of the zeitgeist right now, but what else should a discerning watch lover be looking for?
At last year’s Watches & Wonders in Geneva, all the buzz centred on the return of steel sports watches with an ‘integrated’ bracelet, such as the IWC Ingenieur 40, or Chopards’s Alpine Eagle. The design has an all-round appeal, says Maxim de Turckheim, senior watch buyer at Mr Porter – “you just want that watch you can wear with everything,” he says, “and those watches provide that solution” – and so it makes sense a series of brands might make luxurious, high-ticket version for 2024. Louis Vuitton has done it with its new Tambour, H Moser & Cie has done it with the brilliant Streamliner, and Piaget has done it with the Polo 79.
Smaller shapes, ‘burnt’, sunburst colours and retro detailing are reigning supreme right now, be that in the popularity of specific vintage pieces – just look at the boom for tiny dress watches – or the arrival of new watches that pay homage to the watch industry of the '70s. Vintage dealer Robin Mann says the trend for “disco” watches (as he lovingly calls them) is on fire. “Whether it’s derivative watches that look back,” he says, such as Rado’s Anotom Automatic or Casio’s Casiotron 50th Anniversary reissue, “or whether it’s the original Piagets that are doing so well, people are really tuning into them.”
One of many watch trends that bloomed last year and looks set to continue in 2024. “Five years ago, it was all about blue dials,” says de Turckheim, “now it’s all about green.” There are verdant pieces across the industry, ranging from Oris’s almost-silly-but actually-cool ‘Kermit’ Pro-Pilot to Cartier’s smoky bottle green Santos, and now TAG Heuer’s limited edition Carrera Chronograph Green and Zenith's new green dial Chronomaster Sport. “I just think that green is such an easy colour, it goes with everything,” adds De Turckheim. “A lot of buyers still think they can’t wear blue [watches] with black [outfits], but green literally goes with black, brown, steel or gold.”
Since the pandemic, watch culture has boomed, says Mann, and people are buying watches they can actually wear rather than lock away for safe-keeping. “The design, the aesthetic, the accessory element of the watch almost takes priority over whether it actually tells the time,” he says. It means that lesser-known independent brands, such as Ressence, Studio Underd0g, or Pequignet, are getting love from a broader spectrum of people, including people who perhaps wouldn’t have thought to look beyond Patek or Rolex in th past. “These [brands] have all been super successful because clients are more and more drawn to something that no one else has,” says de Turckheim, “or to being the first to discover something.”
