Jewellery watches shine: bling meets innovation in 2024, from Cartier to Van Cleef & Arpels

Jul 29 , 2024

Sleek, sparkly and showcasing creativity, this year’s newest timepieces are blurring the line between haute horlogerie and haute joaillerie

For decades, women’s jewellery watches were seen more as glamorous accessories than mechanically driven marvels. Indeed, the recent resurgence of the sautoir trend – fuelled by the debut of new models by the likes of Chanel, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Van Cleef & Arpels at last year’s Watches and Wonders – ardently evoked an archaic era when timepieces were cleverly concealed in jewellery because it was considered rude for women to check the time.

Both watchmakers and jewellers have since put their own spin on what they consider jewellery watches. The definition has further evolved as more men embrace jewellery watches, thanks in part to the looming influence of hip-hop culture.

But this raises a question around whether a watch has to be loaded with gems to be considered a jewellery watch.

Cartier is a maison that has masterfully balanced haute horlogerie with haute joaillerie for over a century. For Watches and Wonders this year, the house went back to austere yet captivating basics with a slightly larger Baignoire in solid yellow gold recalling the bold aesthetics of the 70s, while also debuting a gem-set Tigrée jewellery watch in a distinctive zebra-stripe pattern.

The Tigrée jewellery watch, part of Cartier’s animal jewellery watch collection, was unveiled at Watches and Wonders 2024

But it is the new Reflection de Cartier that may just be the maison’s ultimate expression of a jewellery watch.

The piece features an openwork metal bracelet with a subtly minuscule watch dial at one end and a mirrored surface at the other – wearers tell time off the reflection so that it almost appears to be running backwards. Moreover from a jeweller’s perspective, the piece offers an innovative way to display the time, using techniques like gold polishing.

Van Cleef & Arpels’ Brise d’Été, from the Lady Arpels collection

While there are bejewelled versions of the Reflection, Baignoire and Tigre available, Cartier proves that women’s watches can be as functionally innovative as they are beautiful, with or without the addition of eye-grabbing gems.

Taking a different, yet complementary, approach to women’s watches, Van Cleef & Arpels’ Poetic Complications collection is an example of how a jeweller can deftly convey its own identity without compromising on mechanical innovation. The jeweller’s famously whimsical designs are a hallmark of the collection’s timepieces – though in this case, the house used retrograde complications to bring motion to its dials, creating exquisite watches that do much more than just tell time.