Although brands are making strides to appeal to women, Brynn Wallner, creator of Dimepiece, a woman-focused online watch platform, tells Who What Wear that there are few and far pieces on the market right now that speak to what women actually want. Traditional celebrity-filled watch advertisements always felt too glitzy and frilly and unattainable for Wallner, who didn’t care for the overly gendered pink, delicate, gem-set watches that were pushed toward female clientele.
“Now, thanks to social media, women are having conversations about watches that aren’t so niche or nerdy or come with predisposed knowledge,” Wallner explains. A quick glance at her comment section filled with New York City It girls confirms her sentiments—most of them are turning to the vintage-watch market to fuel their timepiece cravings.
Although wristwatches primarily relied on a female clientele when first invented, as men used pocket watches to tell time, a slow, steady decline of women-first watch styles, advertisements, and marketing tactics have all but eliminated women from the watch space. Of course, female customers and collectors still exist, but they’re largely outnumbered by the die-hard male fanatics who spend time arguing on Reddit forums about what nitty-gritty mechanical aspects of a watch are better, Wallner explains.
Frankly, for the average person, it isn’t very interesting. Most first-time watch buyers don’t place nearly as much importance on automatic versus mechanical movements or what precious metal the crown is made out of. When buying my first watch, all I cared about was that it told me the time (even if I’m perpetually late) and looked good on. It’s not that people who only care about the aesthetics behind a timepiece, especially a luxury buy, are superficial. In reality, it’s because watches haven’t been as heavily marketed to women as they have to men over the last 80 years. In this case, it really is the patriarchy bringing us down.
“I think brands are finally starting to catch on about the need to market to women. There’s quite a bit of ways to go, but I always think about how women have some of the most spending power, but there are still missing pieces from that puzzle when it comes to education and access,” says Dana Li, creator of Tell the Time, another women’s watch resource. “Instead of just taking a product shot of a watch that doesn’t tell you anything, brands should have women modeling the watches and styling them.”
