The Bold and Beautiful of Women's Watches

Remember the women's watches of yesteryear, scaled-down versions of men's styles, or diminutive, ladylike dress watches forever awaiting a big night out? They're history. Women's watches have become hot fashion accessories, meant to get noticed, with large, look-at-me dials, glitter galore and more color than a king-size box of Crayolas

The Growing Size Of Women's Watches

When it comes to women's watches, petite and feminine are no longer near synonyms. Case sizes are creeping upward, and what used to be a standard (a diameter of say, 24 millimeters) is now downright, well, petite. Some women's styles are true behemoths, 40 millimeters across, or even more. Why the trend toward super-sizing? One reason is men's watches. As they've grown to hubcap-like dimensions, women's have bulked-up, too. Another is the popularity of women's chronograph watches (a veritable craze that took root in the '90s), which necessitated dials large enough to accommodate chronograph subdials. The biggest reason for the interest in big: large faces have room for jazzy numerals, decorative dials, fancy hands and all manner of snazzy indicators - all the things that make a watch worth wearing.

Color And Women's Watches

It's true that pink is for girls, er, women, but so, it seems, are blue, purple, green, red and yellow. All are showing their bright faces on women's watches. In addition to Popsicle pastels and vibrant primary colors, there's a more serious palette of grays (pearl, slate, charcoal) and browns (coffee, copper and bronze) for occasions that call for some gravitas. And, yes, orange is still hot. If you can't find a watch to go with every outfit in your closet, Halloween costumes included, you're just not trying. The dominant look is watchstraps and dials that match, the latter often mother-of-pearl, dyed any color you can name. Also popular: colored gemstones, especially sapphires, in all their various hues - yellow, pink,orange, and, of course, blue.

Wild New Shapes For Women's Watches

We'll bet you've never seen so many unusual shapes outside of a fun house full of mirrors. One of the biggest trends in women's watches is non-round styles. It's both a new development and an old one: when wristwatches came on the scene, in the early 1900s, women's models took on a range of wild shapes before settling into the more staid rounds and rectangles of later decades. Now, once again, it's anything goes, with flower shapes (from Tissot and Citizen, among others), crosses (Roger Dubuis, Locman), egg shaped (Breguet), long rectangles curved to fit the wrist (cK), semicircles (Jean d'Eve) and ovals (from companies too numerous to mention). Van Cleef & Arpels even has a watch shaped like the Alhambra in Spain. So-called east-west watches, which are wider than they are high, are gaining fashion traction. They're available now in oval, rectangle and tonneau shapes, with more variations on the way.

The lesson is clear: when you're adding to your wardrobe, don't forget watches.

Mechanical Women's Watches

Watch companies are all wound up about women's mechanical watches. Ever since quartz movements came to dominate the watch world, women have largely eschewed mechanical ones. When men began snapping up mechanical watches in the 1980s - as they're still doing today, in enormous numbers - most women stuck with quartz watches.

Now many makers of mechanical watches have launched a charm offensive to win women over. They're offering a bumper crop of new women's models: not plain, garden-variety mechanical watches like grandma used to wear, but extra-fancy ones, incorporating a barrel-full of special functions and features: chronographs, power reserve indicators, full calendars and even tourbillons. In terms of styling, they're pulling out all the stops, with eye-catching displays for all these exotic add-ons: a winning combination of function and fashion.

Glitzing Up Wome's Watches

Women's watches are so gem-laden these days that the term jewelry watch is almost a redundancy. But bona fide glammed-up, gem-heavy models designed for after-dark revelry, are more plentiful than ever. Perhaps as a consequence (the need to set themselves apart from the crowd), they're also more unusual in design, moving way beyond over-the-top bling. Just a few examples: Jaeger-LeCoultre has new jewelry versions of its Reverso watches that have diamonds set in a lopsided-checkerboard pattern and, in another model, a pattern resembling dice. Patek Philippe has a new version of its Twenty~4, decorated with a bubble pattern composed of diamonds. Cartier has several new enamel and diamond models inspired by jungle animals, including a tiger-striped pendant watch. And Piaget has a diamond has a diamond watch customized with the owners fingerprint.

Watch Straps and Style

Watch straps are mere appendages no more. As watches have become accessories, watch bands have stepped into the spotlight. No wonder: a watch strap can make a plain watch fancy or tone down a dressy one for office wear. Or, like magic, turn a shy, retiring watch into the perfect companion for a tangerine beach sarong.

Exotic watch strap materials are hot as the tropics, and include sea snake, python, galuchat (stingray) and simulated big-cat skins (especially leopard). Fabric straps are also plentiful - Audemars Piguet has an array of embroidered silk ones on some of its women's watches. Then there's the old standby, calfskin, dyed a vibrant color or embossed to look like lizard.

Many watches are designed so the owner can change the strap herself. Some watchstraps can be converted from one style to another. The Baby Star by Zenith Watches, for instance, has a thin leather strap that can be worn alone or, for a sportier look, on top of a wide cuff.