In the watch business, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a big bank balance is in search of a big watch. A small watch is deemed too feminine, so models in the 40mm plus category such as the 41mm Tudor Black Bay Chrono, 44mm Hublot Big Bang, and the 43mm IWC Big Pilot, are examples of the kind of muscular, all action steel sport watches which have dominated the market since the mid-late '90s.
Today, the supersize watch is (finally) being challenged by a new generation of connoisseurs and celebrities such as Tyler, The Creator, Henry Golding, Timothée Chalamet and Bad Bunny who wore a dainty women’s Patek Philippe in his recent GQ shoot credited simply as, ‘His Own’. Trends in watches, like fashion, are a reflection of society and can be prone to backlashes and corrections. “We see it everywhere else in fashion,” says the watch influencer, Brynn Wallner, better known by her Instagram handle @dimepiece, “Men such as Harry Styles are embracing traditionally femme clothing and accessories, so it only makes sense that men would want to try out smaller watches to go with this overall shift in aesthetic.”
Sylvester Stallone knew he was onto something when he discovered a 44mm Panerai Luminor in Milan while building the character for the 1995 movie Daylight, and declared that it had “star power”. He gave one to Arnold Swarzhzenegger as a gift with the word ‘Slytech’ engraved on the caseback, and Panerai subsequently became the go-to watch for make-belief action men appearing in movies such as Eraserhead, The Expendables franchise and Rambo IV. Hip hop helped to further pump up the size of watches, with rappers such as Jay Z, Kanye West, 50 Cent and pretty much every platinum-selling rapper of the early '00s wearing the blinged out 47mm 5 Timezone by Jacob the Jeweller. “God, it's just so obvious,” says Wallner who is a little tired of the look. “Big watch, big man, big hands, big... nevermind. If you're The Rock, by all means, wear a 44mm watch. But the reality is that most men have smaller wrists, and these XL timepieces come off as a silly yearning for the traditional ideal of masculinity.”
Today, even the prettiest and most diminutive of actors such as Timothee Chalamet – who has been seen on the red carpet wearing a 33mm Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Classic Medium Duoface Small Second – get to play warriors in movies such as Dune and King. In hip hop, Tyler, The Creator has been building an incredible collection of rare Cartier watches including the 19mm Cartier Obus Quadrant, a rare 27mm Santos Dumont devoid of screws on the bezel, and, of course, a Cartier Crash with a width of 23mm.
Meanwhile, actor Kodi Smit-McPhee lit up the 2022 Oscar red carpet in a powder blue Bottega Veneta suit and a custom Cartier which was so pretty and feminine with its dial full of cascading diamonds on a similarly bedazzled wristband, that it looked like it could easily come from the maison’s fine jewellery atelier. Henry Golding’s penchant for the Cartier Tank, which has been worn by everyone from Mohammed Ali to Jackie Onassis, reminds us that the Tank is the original gender-neutral watch and an icon that can ride out any trend and still look chic. “Men who wear smaller watches are not afraid to deviate from the norm,” says Wallner. “This man likes to experiment with his personal style and get creative with his accessories. Also, it's way more fun to hunt down a special, smaller vintage piece from the '70s than it is to wear the black Submariner that everyone else has.”
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“The economy also has a role to play,” says Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, managing director of British watchmaker Fears, whose signature piece, the Brunswick, measures 38mm. “Pre 2008 you couldn’t sell anything that didn’t have a logo splashed all over it, and that coincided with these huge watches and after the crash, everything became much more subtle again. I saw a lot of people moving their money from big flashy sports watches into more discreet dress watches in white gold and platinum that slip under a shirt cuff, so it looks discreet, inherited, and not ostentatious.” For Scargill-Bowman, when it comes to impact and presence, size really isn’t everything. “If you take a cushion case like on the Brunswick, which for all intents and purposes is a square and you make it 38 by 38, yes, it is technically quite small on the wrist, but it still has presence and people like presence.”
So a smaller watch is not only cooler and more creative, it can also be subtle and low key while still having a distinctive presence. In short, a small watch can do everything an action man watch can do, while not being obnoxious, which is something to bear in mind during a recession. Perhaps that’s why from the very beginning, wristwatches dating back to the trenches of WW1 to the '50s with icons such as the Rolex Explorer, the overwhelming majority of men’s watches have been under 40mm. Action man watches are, in fact, an aberration, not the norm. Long live the small watch.
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