Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet: why these women watch collectors are wearing men’s timepieces and shrugging off traditional expectations
- For women looking for in-house movements, interesting complications and more varied designs, often that means buying watches meant for men
- The watch community is finding a new, female audience on social media, and it’s one that believes men and women can wear any sort or size of watch they choose
Lung Lung Thun is one of a rare breed of women watch collectors. She researches the history of individual watches, she discusses watches, she understands watches and she buys watches – often larger men’s watches with complicated mechanical movements.
Turning 32 in August, Thun, a financier who runs her own brokerage in Hong Kong, says watch brands have too often failed to provide women watch enthusiasts with substantial models tailored to their requirements – with technically advanced movements rather than simple quartz inner works.
“For a super-long time already, people have been complaining to brands saying, ‘It’s unfair that you create female watches like this, it’s just quartz, you don’t think about it,’” she says, adding that brands have made varying excuses over the years for sticking to the material. One was that the smaller sizes often wanted by women limited the size of the power reserves that could be squeezed into the watch’s case. “Now that guys want smaller watches they seem to have figured it out,” she says.
Brands have tended to regard women’s watches as jewellery that tells the time – an afterthought that too often married gold and gems with a cheap quartz movement. Enthusiasts like Thun now demand more than that: they want in-house movements, interesting complications and design that goes beyond the merely decorative. That’s why now they’re often buying so-called men’s watches instead.
