The rise of weird and wonderful watches: independent watchmakers are quickly gaining popularity
Indie designers and big labels are starting to create striking new watches. So, what’s behind the move to unusual designs?
When Rexhep Rexhepi, the independent watchmaker once dubbed the “indie king” by our US GQ colleagues, loves something, he commits.
“I have a few knives. I love art. I love, honestly I like everything. This is why I have respect for everything. When I see something good ... I like, for example, furniture. I’m a big collector of furniture. I have a lot, really a lot, I have a garage full of furniture. I’m a strange guy. But when I like something, I go deep on it,” Rexhepi said during The Hour Glass’s IAMWATCH event in Singapore late last year.
Which goes a long way to show why Rexhepi’s watches, each one made meticulously by hand, are so very beautiful.
If there was ever proof required that the watch world has shed any last vestiges of persnickety cloistered-ness and that things were getting, well, more loosey-goosey, this event celebrating independent watchmaking was it.
Many of the independent watchmakers present – Rexhepi, but also Maximilian Büsser from MB&F (in which Chanel recently acquired a 25 per cent stake) – were mobbed like rockstars. Attendees lined up to have them sign their event booklets. “Guys, I’m not Mick Jagger!” laughs the handsome and not not Mick Jagger-like Büsser when I ask him about it.
Jean Arnault, director of watches at Louis Vuitton, spoke of his own watch obsession – there since childhood – on several panels.
In 2023 Arnault established the Louis Vuitton Prize for Independent Watchmaking, which is currently open for the second edition. Under the LV umbrella he has brought two important watch brands back to life, Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth.
At the event the youngest child of LVMH founder and chief executive Bernard Arnault could be found working the booths for both brands. On one panel he said that one thing he really doesn’t like is inconsistency. To be consistent is advice useful to any field, and indeed any person. But the thing you really felt about the IAMWATCH event – which was open to the public – was the sense of being part of something. It’s hardly ever been cool to be sincere, but it should be. Whether you were a watch collector – and at this event there were some extremely serious collectors – or a new-to-it-all enthusiast, you could join this community.
It fits with the observations of Geoff Hess, global head of watches at auction house Sotheby’s, who says “fun is back” in watches and collecting.
Hess, by the way, also started New York’s RollieFest, an invitation-only watch collector event described to The New York Times by one attendee as “the Super Bowl for watch nerds”. Last year Hess sold one of Sylvester Stallone’s rare Patek Philippe watches – a Grandmaster Chime 6300 – for Sotheby’s. It fetched US$5.4 million, the highest price ever paid for a modern watch at auction.
Cooling prices in the secondary market means fewer people are speculating for investment purposes (which is the antithesis of having your own taste). Hess believes people are back to buying things they love.
“Collectors are enjoying that thrill of the hunt,” he says. “People are resisting the urge to just follow the herd and buy the hyped watches.”
Of course we will always want the world’s biggest brands: everybody wants those; will always want them. As Hess says, these are mostly the best watches in the world. But he notes more interest than ever in smaller, independent brands, too.
As an interesting aside, one third of watch buyers at Sotheby’s are either Millennials and members of Gen Z, and their tastes are different. Especially when it comes to what Hess calls their “aspiration” watch; that one grail you’d buy, price, or waitlist, be damned.
This loosening up is happening in other ways, too. Yes, what’s old is often what’s new in watches. But this has also meant a pleasing return to funky- shaped timepieces.
Last year there was the asymmetrical Audemars Piguet [RE] Master02, a nod to shapes of the ’60s. Piaget also paid tribute to Andy Warhol, a true watch aficionado who famously never set the time on his Cartier Tank but wore it because it was the thing to wear. He also owned several Patek Philippes. Piaget’s relaunched cushion-shaped Black Tie watch is now officially known as the Andy Warhol watch.
And as Hess also notes, the Cartier Crash – first released in 1967 – has never been so hot.
“I’ll also say that’s why people are discovering watches with unusual case shapes. We are seeing a similar run-up with Cartier. People are discovering the joy of the Crash. They’re discovering the [Cartier Tank] Asymétrique,” he says.
Brynn Wallner, founder of the women’s watch-focused digital platform Dimepiece is also on board the funky watch train for 2025.
“The ‘unusual’ vintage watch trend – as in, funky, fun shapes spurred by the Cartier Crash – has been going hard in [recent] years. This will persist, increasing the value of pieces like, say, the Patek Philippe [Golden] Ellipse or gem-set smaller pieces from the ’90s on the secondary market while fuelling re-launches and special contemporary novelties from the watchmakers themselves,” she says.
Wallner, a long-time and vocal advocate of “teeny-tiny”watches, also wonders if early adopters of the small but zany watch trend might flip back, fashion people being what they are.
“The fashion-forward collectors might be rediscovering classics like the Rolex Explorer 1 or other tool watches from the big brands,” she adds.
You can see this same shift in the rise of micro-brands, too. These sometimes Kickstarter- funded watch brands are often born out of a desire
for something different. Some, such as the first watch launched by Furlan Marri, have won prizes at what is basically the Oscars of the watch world, Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.
When I ask Andrew McUtchen, the London-based Australian founder of Time+Tide – the watch website turned retailer for several micro-brands – what’s driving this, he has many thoughts about why these smaller brands are hitting.
Firstly, he says, the micros offer creativity and agility. And yes, they’re a lot more affordable than a watch from a more established brand.
McUtchen expects the micros to this year become sophisticated. One he’s particularly impressed by is a brand that Hess mentions, too: Toledano & Chan. Its stone dial watch (the stone dial is another fun detail making a return right now) with a Brutalist aesthetic is the kind of piece you’d really notice someone wearing. Hess sold the brand’s very first watch at Sotheby’s last year.
McUtchen is also a fan of British brand Studio Underd0g “who are bringing colour and whimsy and personality back to watchmaking”.
See, fun.
In any case, it is no small thing to resist a trend. To not buy a watch because it’s the “right” thing to have or because you think it will hold its value.
“We’re all human beings. We all have insecurity. It’s very hard to buy watches that aren’t trendy, that people aren’t piling into,” notes Hess.
Which is why when people start to buy and wear what they love, it truly feels like something. So even if – or when – it swings back, the move away from regulation-size stainless-steel sports watches to smaller watches, for everybody, is another example. Don’t you think actor Paul Mescal at the Gladiator II premiere in Sydney late last year wearing the chicest mini Cartier Baignoire watch – such a tiny piece on such a brawny gladiator! – feels the right amount of elegant contrarian for now?
Hess thinks watch collectors and admirers are seeking, perhaps more than ever, a sense of discovery, connection and authenticity. Maybe, too, an understanding of your own personal tastes. Who among us doesn’t want that?
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