
First Among Equals
Women are an emerging force in the watch-buying market, but their influence hasn’t been reflected at executive level—until now. The She-suite are coming.
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In an era when fierce online conflicts against total strangers are normalised, where the posting of a cat meme on Instagram can spark World War III, it should come as no surprise that the modern horological battleground is equally heated—especially the moment conversations around gender enter the fray. Should women wear men’s watches? Why are brands bothering to make unisex timepieces? What’s the correct wrist-to-watch ration on a lady? Do women even like watches? At any given time, all these questions and more are bandied around social media and internet forums of varying degrees of sageness. Australian women may have secured suffrage over 100 years ago, but their right to adorn their wrists with anything they see fit is clearly not sacrosanct.
What’s not up for debate, however, is that an increasing number of women continue to enter the global space as enthusiasts, collectors and buyers, undeterred by the surrounding noise. Global market research firm Allied Market Research estimates that by 2027, the women’s watch segment will be worth around $39.6 billion. And according to the watch platform Chrono24, the proportion of women who bought luxury watches of at least 40 mm in diameter—around the starting size point for a typical men’s timepiece—grew from 21 percent to 35 percent between 2019 and 2023.
Granted, numbers of this magnitude have piqued the interest of most major brands. But behind the gleaming boutique facades and slick advertising campaigns there remains a dearth of women in senior leadership positions. CPIH, a group that represents the interests of the Swiss watch industry, reports that only 17 percent of the top horology jobs are held by women.

“At the top of the pyramid, in the C-suite, we’re very few,” confirms Coralie Charriol, chairman and CEO of Charriol, the Geneva-based watch company started by her father Philippe Charriol in 1983. “There’s long been women in the manufacturing, marketing and sales sides. They’re just not at the top.”
“Being the boss is freakin’ hard” she continues. “You’re the decision maker. And I’ve made the decision to model my watches off of myself in the sense that I am trying to design for an active woman, a woman who has multiple roles in her life… of course there are many, many different kinds of women. You can’t design for everyone, but you hope that what you’re creating and your message is going to reach many people as possible.”
It’s no secret that throughout watchmaking history, male executives made and marketed timepieces that largely mirrored themselves in taste, and perhaps, appearance. But, as the watch segment enters a period of unprecedented growth—a report this year by Business Research Insights puts the industry’s market size at just over $200 billion by 2031—there are green shoots of hope that a more progressive outlook will spread across executive leadership, brand partnerships and marketing efforts.

Take this year’s Watches & Wonders exhibition in Geneva, where one of the most talked-about novelties was Vacheron Constantin’s Égérie Pleats of Time concept watch. A collaboration with Yiqing Yin, a Paris-based female haute couturier and brand ambassador, the timepiece included a perfume-infused strap woven with mother-of-pearl shards. Alexandra Vogler, CMO of Vacheron Constantin, previously worked in the fragrance industry. “Merging culture and art and high watchmaking, this is very interesting,” she told Robb Report at the Swiss conference. “For me, these emotional dots I connected, I did so across three teams because I know when mixing creatives that’s how you get to birth new ideas.”
In Vogler’s roughly two years as CMO, she’s rebuilt the brand’s portfolio and announced a collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The three-year agreement will support various educational initiatives and bespoke collaborations, including the creation of Vacheron Constantin timepieces inspired by artworks from The Met collection.
A few booths away stood Jaeger-LeCoultre’s CEO Catherine Rénier, who’d recently commissioned two-Michelin-star chef Himanshu Saini to create the Precision Atelier, a gastronomic experience that delves into the science of ingredients. Rénier, who since our chat has been tapped to be Van Cleef and Arpels’ new boss, remarked: “Watchmaking is a very niche, initiated world. So we open up this world to a larger audience through another field that will showcase similar values. And then of course, the artistic dimension is important because we do feel that more and more that the relationship to your timepiece is the same as a piece of art.”

By incorporating voices from the spheres of fashion, culinary and fragrance—different domains, sure, but with shared values like precision, beauty and expertise—more varied connections to watch brands are formed beyond customers strictly interested in horology, who historically have skewed male. “I believe that you cannot talk to women the same way you talk to men about watches,” insists Coralie Charriol. “They respond to different touchpoints.”
This formula has already begun producing dividends. In February, the six variations of the Chronomat collection from Victoria Beckham for Breitling debuted, complementing the British designer’s spring/summer 2024 collection. A month earlier at Paris Fashion Week, couturier Tamara Ralph dressed her models in a limited-edition Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon. Quite a way for Ilaria Resta, the marque’s incoming CEO, to make a statement. (It’s worth noting, too, that Resta joins Ginny Wright, CEO of Audemars Piguet Americas, in the C-suite of the Swiss company)

While fashion and fragrance are proving to be useful conduits for attracting more diverse audiences, female collectors are also expressing interest in more intricate timepieces.
“We have the opportunity to be in touch with more and more women and we are listening to what they want,” Resta told online magazine Revolution Watch in March (though, for the record, she declined an interview with Robb Reportfor this story). “There is a demand for complicated watches for women. The complications for women don’t necessarily have to be the same as those for men. I’ll give you an example. The Starwheel is an amazing watch that is very much loved by women. But at the moment, it only comes in a 41 mm diameter case. It is very appealing to women as a poetic representation of time and as a design statement, so of course we need to look into this.”
Female collectors throughout history, according to Vacheron Constantin’s Alexandra Vogler, have been rich veins of inspiration; in the 19th century, 30 percent of the letters received by the manufacture came from women. “We’ve had specific requests from our female clients for a rotating bezel, winding mechanisms. We have evidence in our archives demonstrating that women’s requests pushed the boundaries of innovation.”
Indeed, the history books show that women played a pivotal role in the development of modern timekeeping; it’s believed the first wristwatch was made for England’s Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century, while in 1810, Caroline Bonaparte, the Queen of Naples, commissioned Louis Breguet to create a piece especially for her.
Perhaps, internet trolls, women are the original watch bosses after all.
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