A Dossier: The Watch
The Watch
A Dossier
The first wristwatch was made for a woman.
June 8, 1810: Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, commissioned Abraham-Louis Breguet to build a repeater watch mounted on a bracelet of hair and gold thread. The archives at Breguet's Place Vendôme headquarters still hold the ledger entry. Delivered December 21, 1812. No. 2639. Five thousand French francs.
The first purpose-built wristwatch in history — designed for a woman, by her request, sixty years before anyone thought to make one for a man.
For the next century, wristwatches remained women's instruments. Men carried pocket watches; anything worn on the wrist was considered decorative, feminine, insufficiently serious. A 1916 article in La Revue Internationale de l'Horlogerie dismissed wristwatches as "an essentially feminine article of jewellery, useless for men." The British press mocked soldiers returning from the Boer War wearing "wristlets."
Then came the trenches. Men discovered what women had known for a hundred years: a watch on the wrist is superior to a watch in the pocket when your hands are occupied. By 1917, the British War Department was issuing wristwatches to combat troops. By 1930, the industry had pivoted entirely.
The wristwatch — invented by women, for women, refined by women for over a century — became a masculine object. The industry rewrote the origin. And then it spent the next hundred years treating women as an afterthought in a market they created.
Forty-seven watches examined. Eleven houses. Auction records traced. Failures documented.
The contempt is measurable.
In late 2024, Deloitte partnered with Watch Femme to survey 6,000 consumers across twelve markets — balanced demographics, income stratification, verified purchase history. The methodology was rigorous. The findings were not subtle.
Eighty-five percent of women said the watches in advertisements don't reflect what they actually wear. Seventy-nine percent reported receiving a different experience than men in boutiques. The study's own language for what women described: "patronising to downright misogynist."
The pattern surfaced repeatedly in their data: women asking about movements and being steered toward jewelry cases. Women stating their budgets and being shown watches at half the price. Women knowing exactly what they wanted — the reference number, the caliber, the complication — and being met with surprise that they'd done the research.
Seventeen to nineteen percent of Millennial and Gen Z women now shop online specifically to avoid the boutique experience. They'd rather buy a five-figure watch through a screen than endure the interaction.
The industry term for what it offers women: shrink it and pink it. Take a men's watch. Reduce the case diameter. Replace the mechanical movement — hundreds of components, years of engineering — with quartz. Add diamonds to the bezel. Call it a women's watch.
The price stays the same. Often higher. The watch is fundamentally less.
What she actually wants.
Over eighty percent of female watch buyers surveyed say mechanical movement matters to them. Not quartz. Not battery-powered. The engineering itself — the oscillating balance wheel, the escapement releasing energy four times per second, the gear train translating that pulse into the motion of hands. They want what runs on physics, not batteries.
They want complications. Moonphase displays tracking the 29.5-day lunar cycle through an aperture on the dial. Chronographs with column-wheel construction — the sophisticated vertical clutch that engages the stopwatch function without the hand-stutter of cheaper horizontal coupling. Perpetual calendars that account for the irregular lengths of months and leap years, requiring no correction until 2100.
These complications exist at 44mm. At 42mm. At 40. The woman who wants serious horology in a case that fits her wrist finds the shelves empty.
The shift is documented: in 2016, one-third of watches sold to women measured under 28mm. By 2020, fourteen percent. Nearly two-thirds of female buyers now purchase from what the industry still calls the "men's" collection.
They're not confused about their wrists. They're buying the only watches that contain what they want.
What separates a watch worth owning from a watch worth forgetting.
The Patek Philippe Nautilus makes the pattern visible.
The men's reference 5711 runs the 26-330 S C automatic caliber: 324 components, 45-hour power reserve, Gyromax balance wheel with gold weights for precision adjustment, Spiromax balance spring in Silinvar — a silicon-based material that resists temperature variation and magnetism. This is the movement collectors discuss with reverence.
The women's Nautilus reference 7118 runs quartz. Same Gerald Genta case design. Same five-figure price. Battery-powered.
The justification is always miniaturization: mechanical movements are difficult to make small. This would be compelling if Jaeger-LeCoultre hadn't introduced Caliber 101 in 1929. Fourteen millimeters by 4.8 millimeters. Ninety-eight components. The world's smallest mechanical movement — assembled under magnification by specialists who train for years before they're permitted to touch one. Still in production. Queen Elizabeth II wore it at her coronation in 1953, set into a bracelet of white gold and diamonds.
The technology has existed for ninety-five years. The will has not.
A mechanical movement can be disassembled, cleaned, worn parts replaced, reassembled, regulated. A watchmaker in 2085 can service a mechanical watch from 1960 if the parts are available or can be fabricated. A quartz movement from 1995 is electronic waste with a nice case — when the integrated circuit fails, the watch is finished.
The provenance question.
Most of the watch industry runs on movements manufactured by someone else.
The Swatch Group's ETA division supplies calibers to dozens of brands. The ETA 2824-2 — a workhorse automatic, three-hand with date — appears in watches priced from $400 to $5,000. Same Swiss factory. Same 25-jewel architecture. Same 28,800 vibrations per hour. The difference is case materials, finishing, and what the dial says.
Some houses rename these movements. The Glycine Caliber GL224 is an ETA 2824. The Frédérique Constant Calibre FC-303 is the same architecture with a different designation. The renaming creates the impression of proprietary engineering. It doesn't change what's inside.
ETA movements are not inferior — they're accurate, durable, time-tested. But the woman paying $8,000 for a watch with an ETA movement is paying for the case and the brand. The woman paying $8,000 for an in-house movement — Rolex, Patek Philippe, the upper references from Cartier and Jaeger-LeCoultre — is paying for the engineering itself.
Both purchases are legitimate. The industry prefers she not know which is which.
Three wrists, six decades, the same answer.
Jacqueline Kennedy received her Cartier Tank from Prince Stanisław Radziwiłł on February 23, 1963.
She wore it through Dallas. Through the remarriage to Onassis. Through the years editing at Doubleday — acquiring Michael Jackson's Moonwalk, working with Carly Simon, rebuilding her identity as something other than widow. Through the rest of her life.
When Christie's offered it in June 2017, the estimate was $60,000 to $120,000. Three minutes of bidding. Hammer: $379,500. The watch itself — a vintage Tank, manually wound, Piguet movement — was worth perhaps $3,000 on mechanics alone. The value was in the wrist it had circled for thirty years.
Diana Spencer inherited a Tank Louis Cartier from her father. She wore it through the engagement, the wedding, the years of performing a marriage that existed for cameras. After the divorce, she stopped wearing the Patek Philippe Charles had given her. She returned to her father's Tank.
The photographs from Angola, January 1997: Diana in body armor, walking through active minefields with the HALO Trust. The steel Tank Française visible on her wrist — the one she'd bought herself after the divorce was finalized. The most serious work of her abbreviated public life. The watch she chose was the one she'd chosen.
Michelle Obama wore a steel Tank Française in her official White House portrait, 2009. No advance notice to Cartier. No sponsorship. No placement. She simply wore what she wore. Steel, not gold. The visual echo of Kennedy was immediate.
Three women navigating power, loss, visibility, reinvention. Three women who chose the same watch — not because anyone marketed it to them, but because the design answered a question they were all asking.
What does a serious woman wear?
The design that preceded the lie.
Louis Cartier sketched the Tank in 1917. The inspiration: the aerial view of the Renault FT-17, the first modern tank, deployed that year on the Western Front. The vertical side pieces — brancards — represented the treads. The rectangular case represented the hull. The strap emerged from within the design rather than attaching to external lugs.
First prototype: General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces. Six commercial pieces, 1919.
The origin matters: 1917 was before the industry gendered the wristwatch.
There was no "men's line" to scale down from. The Tank was designed in the window when wristwatches were still what they had always been — women's instruments being adopted by men. It belongs to neither category because it was created before the categories existed.
This is why it works on every wrist.
The design hasn't fundamentally changed in 107 years. The proportions solved something.
The Tank, specified.
Not all Tanks are the same watch.
Tank Louis Cartier. Closest to the 1919 original. Rounded case edges. Precious metal only — yellow, rose, or white gold. Current production: Cartier's in-house 1917 MC hand-wound movement, 38-hour power reserve. Smaller sizes use quartz. Large size in rose gold: approximately $14,500. This is the mechanical Tank.
Tank Française. The 1996 redesign — sharper edges, integrated metal bracelet echoing tank treads. What Jackie, Diana, and Michelle actually wore. Most references: quartz. Larger sizes offer automatic. Steel: approximately $4,150. The visual impact of a Tank; the engineering varies by reference.
Tank Must. Cartier's 2021 revival of its 1970s accessible line. Steel case. Quartz movement. Some references use SolarBeat photovoltaic technology — powered by light through the dial, no battery replacement for approximately sixteen years. Approximately $3,100. Looks like a Tank. Not, mechanically, what the original Tanks were.
Tank Américaine. Elongated curved case derived from the 1920s Tank Cintrée. More dramatic proportions. Available with chronograph and date complications.
Jackie Kennedy's watch was manually wound, pre-1980s, Piguet caliber. Auction houses and specialty dealers still have them. Good examples: $3,000-$8,000.
Rolex.
Rolex refused to offer women lesser engineering.
The Lady-Datejust runs Caliber 2236: self-winding, entirely developed and manufactured in-house, the same Superlative Chronometer certification applied to men's references. The Syloxi hairspring — silicon, paramagnetic, temperature-stable — oscillates at 28,800 vibrations per hour. Fifty-five-hour power reserve. Accuracy after casing: -2/+2 seconds per day.
This is not a compromise. It's the same engineering philosophy applied to a 28mm case.
Lady-Datejust in steel: approximately $7,200. Precious metals with diamond settings exceed $30,000. The Datejust 31 offers the same caliber in a larger case. The Datejust 36 — now the gender-neutral standard — runs Caliber 3235 with 70-hour power reserve.
The waitlist problem is real. Authorized dealers often have nothing; secondary market charges premiums.
The watches exist. They treat the buyer as a collector.
Chanel.
Jacques Helleu, Chanel's director of image, designed the J12 in 1999 as a ceramic sports watch. For himself.
Women wanted it. Rather than dismiss that interest, Chanel invested. They acquired a 20% stake in Kenissi, a movement manufacturer, to develop proprietary calibers. The Caliber 12.1: COSC-certified, 70-hour power reserve, 28,800 vph.
In 2019, the J12 won the Ladies' Watch Prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève. A fashion house beat heritage watchmakers at their own standard.
The J12 in 38mm ceramic with automatic movement: approximately $7,000.
A serious watch that looks like a Chanel. That combination should not be as rare as it is.
The market the industry ignored.
The industry spent decades treating women's purchases as decorative. Men collected. Women accessorized.
The market disagreed.
Eighty-seven percent of high-income women buy watches for themselves without hesitation. At income levels above $275,000, nearly half have purchased watches exceeding $27,000 — their own money, their own wrists.
A Rolex, purchased new and properly maintained, retains approximately 107% of its value. A Cartier Tank retains 80% overall; certain references hold at 94-95%.
Women now represent 35% of U.S. luxury watch sales and 54% of the global market by value — $23.7 billion annually, growing faster than men's.
The contempt was a strategic error.
The correction.
Ilaria Resta became CEO of Audemars Piguet in January 2024 — the first woman to lead the brand in its 149-year history. Catherine Rénier moved from Jaeger-LeCoultre to CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels. Caroline Scheufele has co-presided over Chopard since 1985.
The products reflect the shift. Patek Philippe now offers mechanical complications in women's sizes. Jaeger-LeCoultre developed Caliber 35 for the Rendez-Vous line — because someone decided women deserved more than quartz. The 36mm case has become the industry's gender-neutral standard.
Brynn Wallner founded Dimepiece in 2020 after searching "women and watches" and finding nearly nothing. Suzanne Wong founded Watch Femme as a non-profit, then partnered with Deloitte on the research that quantified what women had known for years.
The conversation is being built by women who stopped waiting.
The position.
The first wristwatch was commissioned by a queen in 1810. The industry spent two centuries pretending otherwise. The women who kept buying, kept wearing, kept passing down — they remembered what the industry forgot.
At luxury prices, quartz is indefensible.
The industry has possessed miniaturization technology since 1929. Caliber 101 has been in continuous production for ninety-five years. The mechanical solution exists. What remains is a choice — a choice to offer women less, at the same price, and assume they won't notice.
They notice.
The standard: mechanical movement. In-house caliber where possible. Serviceable for sixty years.
The watches that hold value are mechanical. The watches that last three generations are mechanical. The watches that justify these prices are mechanical.
Everything else is marketing.
The watch was always theirs.
Forty-seven watches examined.
Brands referenced:
Audemars Piguet ・ Breguet ・ Cartier ・ Chanel ・ Chopard ・ Jaeger-LeCoultre ・ Omega ・ Patek Philippe ・ Rolex ・ Vacheron Constantin ・ Van Cleef & Arpels
Modern Monclaire maintains no commercial relationships with any watch house. This publication accepts no advertising, affiliate revenue, or sponsored content.
