In the Watch World, Size (Small) Increasingly Matters

In early December, Nicolò Villa, a jeweler from Milan, was in Manhattan for a trunk show when he spotted a pre-owned Rolex Lady-Datejust with a blue-green opal dial in a shop on West 47th Street. At 26 millimeters in diameter, the watch’s two-tone case was only slightly larger than a 25-cent piece.

Mr. Villa bought the relatively diminutive watch for his mother but had a change of heart before giving it to her.

“I felt comfortable wearing it,” Mr. Villa said at a gem show in Tucson, Ariz., in February, as he gazed down at the Lady-Datejust, now at home on his right wrist.

“I’m liking more the very flat styles, and I’m going smaller,” he explained. “It feels more elegant. I’m not such a big guy. Proportions for me are very important.”

Mr. Villa’s style choice is hardly news to watch lovers, who have spent the past year obsessing over the vogue for shrinking cases. While size preferences have ballooned over the years — veterans of the watch world may recall that in the early 2000s, Brobdingnagian-size watches, some as big as 50 millimeters, reigned supreme — the aesthetic trend du jour is undeniably dainty and surprisingly feminine.

And even though many of the timepieces debuting this week at the Watches and Wonders fair in Geneva won’t reflect the downsizing trend (owing to the watch industry’s lengthy production cycles), the talk of the town is bound to be the relatively sudden, social media-fueled ubiquity of smaller case sizes.

Just look to the red carpet or the sidelines of a Los Angeles Lakers game and you’ll find celebrities like the rapper Bad Bunny and the actor Timothée Chalamet sporting teeny tiny dress watches from brands including Patek Philippe and Cartier.

John Reardon, founder of Collectability.com, a website for buying and selling vintage Patek Philippe timepieces, said by phone from his office in Chatham, N.J., recently that the shift started during the Covid-19 pandemic, when “people weren’t thinking about what watch they were going to wear to go out — it was, which watch feels good?”

“For the first time in my career — I’ve been selling Patek since the ’90s — I’m having men ask for 32 millimeter,” Mr. Reardon said. “A few years ago, selling a 31 millimeter yellow gold watch to a man was not happening. Today, a 31 millimeter yellow gold watch will be a bidding war between a man and a woman.

“I feel like a therapist: ‘John, is it OK to wear 32 millimeters on my wrist?’” he added. “I say yes and through social media, I’m able to show that it’s not only acceptable, it’s kind of cool.”

On the Instagram feed #teamsmallwatch, the New York City real estate agent and fashion pop-up co-founder Elias Marte (@staycrispymyfriends) has helped make the case for petite wristwatches. He came by his love of small, shapely watches about 15 years ago, when he began to collect vintage pieces (before the 1970s, models rarely exceeded 35 millimeters).

“I prefer anything 32 and under, lug to lug,” Mr. Marte said by phone. “I have a Cartier Santos Octagon women’s watch that’s 22 millimeters. It’s one of my favorites. It’s tiny.”

Mr. Marte said he’s always considered it silly to associate masculinity with big watches. “Honestly, how does a big watch make you more manly?” he said. “If I want to wear a girl’s watch, I’ll wear a girl’s watch. It’s not taking anything away from me.”

The very notion of a “girl’s watch,” however, is in flux. Until about a decade ago, most Swiss watchmakers considered a woman’s watch to be small, gem-set and equipped with a quartz battery. Then, the popularity of “boyfriend watches,” or masculine, mechanical timepieces that a woman borrowed and wore for herself, began to take off. A flood of “unisex watches” followed.

During the pandemic, women around the watch world began to call into question the labels, and the marketing frenzy that accompanied them.

Brynn Wallner, the founder of Dimepiece, an online editorial platform that highlights the intersection between women, watches and pop culture, was one of them. In early 2021, she stopped by a retail store in Florida to research her first watch purchase and the sales associate steered her toward the big watches.

“I said I was interested in the Cartier Tank Française,” Ms. Wallner said recently by phone from New York. “I said, ‘Can you please show me the small size because it’s way better proportioned for my wrist.’ But he was reluctant to show me anything small. He said, ‘Women like big watches. Nobody likes small.’”

As Ms. Wallner spent more time with journalists and collectors, almost all of whom wore big strapping pieces, she found herself questioning her own taste.

“I’d be at a press preview and it was all big watches, nothing under 34 millimeters,” she said. “All of my fellow lady watch journalists were wearing big watches. I almost felt anti-feminist for wanting something small. Why am I drawn to the smaller pieces? Am I really conservative and old-fashioned?”

In June 2021, Ms. Wallner wrote a column for Harper’s Bazaar headlined “In Defense of Small Watches” in which she said that trying on the bigger version of “that Française watch didn’t make me feel powerful or strong; it made me feel weak and small by association.”

Now that collectors are embracing smaller models, Ms. Wallner hopes that watchmakers will feel inspired to pay more attention to ergonomics.

“To me, when I see a well-done ladies watch, I can feel the intention behind it and the fact that it was made for a woman’s wrist,” Ms. Wallner said. “Versus, ‘Here’s this 42 millimeter carbon fiber watch with this complication and it’s unisex!’

“Is it unisex? It was clearly made for a man and you’re just using the label unisex to make it sound more inclusive.”

In a roundabout way, diminishing size preferences may also reflect a basic truth about the watch market in 2024: It’s nothing like the heady days of 2021 and 2022, when secondary prices on the most sought-after steel sport models soared to three, four, even five times their retail value.

When the hype over those pieces, most of which clocked in around 40 millimeters, began to subside later in 2022, and prices returned to more reasonable (if still above retail) levels, the pressure to buy a Rolex Daytona or a Patek Philippe Nautilus subsided, and conformity in sizing and style gave way to rebellion.

“There’s a bigger pull away from the hotter or more common watches,” Eugene Tutunikov, chief executive of the online pre-owned dealer SwissWatchExpo, said by video from his office in Atlanta. “People want to express their individuality.

“That leads them to buy vintage pieces, or some will look at ladies’ pieces that are more jewelry-like with precious stones or unique shapes. It’s not purely because they’re looking for a smaller watch, they’re looking for something unique — and a lot of those happen to be smaller watches.”

Just ask Melanie Pullen, a Los Angeles photographer and longtime watch lover. On a recent call, she said her collecting approach had taken a U-turn over the past year, as she began leaning into more feminine watches.

“My collection was too masculine,” she said. “I felt like the hype was pushing me and I had to take a step back and think, what do I think is cool? I’m drawn to smaller and more wearable pieces.”

In mid-February, Ms. Pullen purchased a 14-karat gold Omega timepiece on a diamond-set bracelet at the Bonhams California Jewels sale. Size of the case: a Lilliputian 13.9 millimeters.

“I wanted to start with the smallest watch I could find,” Ms. Pullen wrote in a text. “And so begins my girly girl phase.”