Pink and proud: the 7 best rose-tinted luxury watches – The Times

‘Shrink it and pink it” is a well-known adage in watch circles — the concept of taking a men’s timepiece and repurposing it for female customers by shrinking the case size, shifting the colour palette to soft pastels and adding a few sparkles. For female watch enthusiasts this has often felt reductive and unimaginative, but now there is a new breed of unapologetically pink timepieces that seem to be changing the narrative.

“I have a pink Longines Mini DolceVita with a bit of bling on the bezel, and I like wearing it with irony. It’s so ‘femme’ it works in a Y2K, ‘I order the pink drink at Starbucks’ kind of way,” says Brynn Wallner, the founder of the watch content platform Dimepiece. “Truly girlie pink watches are best worn with a knowing [attitude].”

Wallner has hit the nail on the head. This year’s mood is to wear the colour on a timepiece with a touch of contrariness. This is in no small part down to Tag Heuer ambassador Ryan Gosling, who wore a steel Carrera Date with a hot-pink dial while promoting Barbie last year. You might think that after the box office hit stopped screening, the world would be over the hue, but this year watchmakers are delivering the shade in spades.

Chanel is on the case: its popular J12 and Boy.Friend timepieces (no 3) are reimagined in bold cerise, a nod to the role pink played throughout Coco Chanel’s career and fashion collections. Gucci’s 25H Flying Tourbillon (no 7) is lit up with fuchsia details on its skeletonised dial and sports a matching strap, while Audemars Piguet’s new 34mm Royal Oak Selfwinding timepiece (no 6) is a vision in 18-carat pink gold, with a vivid pink Grande Tapisserie dial. The house says that the dial “bestows a note of glamour”, but it delivers a touch of frivolity too.

When it comes to jewellery watches, several houses have relied heavily on pink components for their novelties, including Tiffany & Co with its Bird on a Rock design by Jean Schlumberger (no 4) and Bulgari with its collaboration with the architect Tadao Ando (no 2), which includes a pink mother-of-pearl dial, a steel and rose-gold bracelet and a pink rubellite crown.

The pre-owned watch retailer Watchfinder reports that pink models are trending on the second-hand market too, with an 8.7 per cent increase in sales in the past 12 months. Scarlett Baker, another young female voice on the horology scene, welcomes the trend. “Personally I’m never deterred by the fact that the annals of history associate the colour predominantly with women’s tastes,” she says. “I like pink because I like pink, not because I ought to. But what’s exciting, particularly among younger collectors, is this feeling of disruption.”