watch trends ....
A HALF-CENTURY ago, a guy given a watch for the holidays would have torn off the wrapping paper to find a modest box containing a timepiece about the size of a quarter. This season that same package is more likely the size of a hamper, with inside it a hunk of bristling, steel-studded hardware and gears.
Watches have bulked up steadily since the “Mad Men” era, incrementally becoming brawnier, thicker and wide enough across to invite comparison to sundials. Particularly over the last decade, high-end watchmakers like Breitling, Franck Muller, IWC, Lange & Söhne, Omega and Panerai and even traditionally conservative companies like Cartier led the way with models offering ample quantities of what the industry refers to as “wrist presence.”
It was an odd development, given that the rest of the culture was headed in the opposite direction, favoring smaller cars, reduced carbon footprints and leaner six-pack bodies over pumped-up bloat and monster guns.
But the Mark McGwire look, otherwise so out of style now, persists in the world of the steroidal sports watch. And that helps account for the fact that timepieces in stores this season seem to have reached epic proportions.
The current record holder is probably the U-Boat U-1942, a monster at 64.4 millimeters in diameter, or about 2.5 inches.
But the U-Boat has plenty of company from heavy metal covering a cost spectrum ranging from, say, Invicta’s modestly priced (just over $100) but hulking Russian Diver Collection Quinotaur Chronograph to the Breitling Super Avenger, a $6,000 (and up) 48-millimeter-wide hunk of metal that would make Dad’s Longines look like a dainty cocktail watch.
Watches have grown as men have adopted “a kind of car collector approach” to buying them, said Tom Kalenderian, general merchandise manager of Barneys New York.
“Guys wanted a fine timekeeping device that not only kept time but said something about status and personal style,” he said.
For men like Steve Baktidy, who owns auto-body repair shops in New York State, a big sports watch is indeed like a sports car. “It gets attention, and it makes a statement,” he said.
Mr. Baktidy started his collection of 35 watches some 15 years ago with a 40-millimeter Rolex Submariner.
Though that watch seemed large at the time (most average sports watches then were 34 to 36 millimeters in diameter), he now favors his Panerai (44 millimeters), Omega Seamaster Railmaster XXL chronometer (49.2 millimeters) or a Glashütte Original that looks like Big Ben on a crocodile strap. “They got bigger and bigger,” Mr. Baktidy said. “What’s the limit? There is no limit.”
There is also, as it happens, no longer much of a gender divide. The vogue for super-size watches is hardly the exclusive province of men, said Carrie Shumway, an associate at a Container Store in Manhattan, shooting her cuff to reveal a wristwatch the size of a saucer. “It’s a boyfriend watch,” Ms. Shumway said. “My boyfriend gave it to me. He’s the fashionista in the family.”
When Lisa Eisner, a writer and publisher in Los Angeles, was still dating her future husband, he surprised her one day by taking her to Tiffany & Company to pick an engagement ring. “I told him I’d rather have a big Rolex Submariner,” Ms. Eisner said. “I love seeing women with big watches. I like big anything.”
According to Edward Faber, the director of the Aaron Faber Gallery, a watch retailer in New York and the author of “American Wristwatches: Five Decades of Style and Design,” it was the sight of more women wearing hefty hardware that triggered a kind of forearms race.
“No man wants to wear a watch smaller than a woman has on,” he said.
The hulking sports watch, the industry’s top seller, is a curious counterpoint to much else in a culture where McMansions are out of favor, fewer gas guzzlers can be seen filling driveways and phones and laptops aspire to near invisibility. In an age when cellphones have largely eliminated the need for a timepiece, the monster wristwatch serves another purpose, as a holdout of permissibly conspicuous consumption.
“It’s still the ultimate look-at-me,” said James Wallman, editor of LS:N Global, a publication of the London trend-watching firm the Future Laboratory.
No comments:
Post a Comment