Watches and Wonders 2024: How women are driving the luxury watch market
Anca Ulea
In the early 1990s, when Caroline Scheufele was still a young designer at her family’s watchmaking business, she realised
Chopard did not make the kind of sportier women’s watch she wanted to wear. So, she took matters into her own hands.
“I used to do a lot of sports, like skiing and swimming and tennis,” the artistic director and copresident of Chopard told Euronews Culture. “I realised we didn’t have anything cool like a sports ladies’ watch. Everything was sort of delicate with white gold or yellow gold, not even rose gold. So I designed the Happy Sport.”
The Happy Sport - rst released in 1993 - marked the rst time diamonds were put into a steel watch, with Chopard’s signature “dancing diamonds” moving freely across the dial. Over the years, it’s become an icon of women’s watchmaking.
“I think, with the Happy Sport, came a whole breakthrough for Chopard ladies’ watches,” Scheufele said.
At this year’s Watches and Wonders trade show, Chopard released a wide variety of di erent women’s watches, re ecting just how far the industry has come in the three decades since Scheufele designed her rst Happy Sport.
The new releases included a new limited-edition of the Happy
Sport with a pale blue alligator leather strap, as well as elaborately embellished jewellery watches, feminine dress watches and minimalist gender-neutral watches.
“I think today a woman’s watch is actually her own choice based on taste, whether that’s a very sporty watch or a watch that’s fully set with diamonds,” Scheufele said. “The dial size also depends on her wrist size. Me, personally, I have tiny wrists but I like to wear big watches.”
Scheufele hits the nail on the head - today's women's watches are as varied as women themselves. Finding what women want to wear, however, has become a priority across the board.
Women collectors nd their voice
The market for women’s watches has been steadily growing as female collectors nd their voice in the male-dominated luxury watch world.
Global market research rm Allied Market Research found that the women’s watch segment, valued at $23.7 billion (€22.2 billion)