THE BRIGHT STUFF
Want to be noticed? Nothing makes a statement like a splash of colour on your wrist
What sort of person buys a brightly coloured watch? Believe it not there are plenty of watch buyers out there who decide what brand they like how much money they have to spend and then when it comes down to it swerve past watches in regular tones and go for something horribly garish And it’s getting more common by the day
Getting funky with the colour scheme didn’t used to be an option In the preelectronic era when watches were tools rather than trophies you picked your metal and went from there Almost everything had a steel case so if you wanted something different you would have to go for gold solid or plate depending on your budget
When watch companies started introducing colour it was more about functionality than fashion Most watches remained monochrome except for the odd bold slash of colour to distinguish an important function like showing the number of elapsed minutes on a diving watch or to differentiate the chronograph dial from the running seconds
In the flower power years of the Sixties and Seventies some makers started introducing radical colours just for fun Rolex made “Stella” versions of its DayDate watch very rare editions with a range of coloured dials Other examples were the watches made in the Sovietcontrolled East German town of Glashütte which came with a whole load of jolly faces in defiance of the reality of life behind the Iron Curtain
Colourful watches existed but they were very much the exception Then along came the Eighties the decade of kaleidoscopic pop videos neon sweatshirts and Jane Fonda’s leg warmers And watches got the colour bug too The main driving force was Swatch which changed the way everyone looked at watches If you’d asked back then how long the trend would last the best answer would have been not very long Not only has it lasted but it has grown in popularity Swatch and other entry level quartz watches are still getting busy with the colours But so are the brands at the other end of the price range
Steel gold and black are still the most obvious choices but colours are big And the target market defies pigeonholing No matter your age gender politics or bank balance the love of colour is all around But the question was who’s buying these brightly coloured clocks? Anyone who thinks telling the time shouldn’t be taken too seriously