When secret watches meet high-end jewellery: How Cartier, Chanel, Bulgari, Piaget and Tiffany & Co. are turning back time
These luxury timepieces blur the boundary between necklaces and watches, bringing back a style popular in the early 20th century
Vintage style was aplenty on the red carpet at the recent Oscars, which in itself is a reflection of the most sought-after fashion trend to follow this year. Margot Robbie wore a mid-1990s vintage couture Chanel, and Lily Aldridge wore two vintage dresses, the first being an archival Ralph Lauren design from spring/summer 2013.
It might not be common to see a necklace on a woman today which doubles up as a watch, but this ancient style to view time has made a comeback. And not just in any ordinary way, but rather in the form of high-end jewellery created by Chanel, Cartier, Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arpels, Harry Winston, Tiffany & Co. and Piaget.
Mimicking the vintage era trend, this type of discreet time-telling device is now seen as a fashion statement.
In the early 20th century, it was considered unfashionable and even frowned upon for a woman to check the time in public. Perhaps she caught the time when her eyes happened to fall on her bosom, or while toying with her pendant, either opened a mechanism which revealed the watch dial or simply turned the pendant to see the watch face on the reverse side. What better way to see the time discreetly?
“Pendant watches set with beautiful stones and sometimes with matching chains are a fashionable accessory. They are fun and decorative, and women can wear them as both jewellery and watches. There’s a great variety of pendant watches in the market made in the early 20th century,” says Joey Luk, head of sales and specialist of Sotheby’s Hong Kong watch department.
It would seem that secret watches go back a couple of centuries further, as Van Cleef & Arpels takes inspiration from timepieces that appeared in the 17th century. A spin-off from the Parisian jeweller’s latest transformable long necklace designed on the theme of a ballet of gold beads, the Perlée pendant watch reveals the dial by sliding the paved surface.
Today, pendants that act as time-telling devices are not often seen in high-end jewellery. Chanel leads the new trend to create one-of-a-kind necklaces with the Première Midnight In Vendôme, a yellow gold sautoir-watch with a black lacquered dial and faceted black onyx caseback pendant, and the Sautoir Mademoiselle Privé Coromandel, inspired by the coveted Coromandel lacquer screens which the late French fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel collected in the 1910s.
The combination of the technical complexity of watchmaking and highly skilled gem-setting techniques in jewellery pays tribute to the watch and jewellery industry as a whole, attesting to the excellence of the artisans.