Next Gen Watch Influencers: Tick-Tock Prophets Shaping the Trends of 2024
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A Cartier Ballon Bleu started it all. Trang Trinh got it for her 20th birthday, and five years later she's best known as @girls.o.clock to her 44,000 followers of TikTok, where she's one of the more popular voices in a booming ecosystem on the platform that can be summed up by one hashtag responsible for 1.2 billion views in the past year: #watchtok.
Besides Trinh, a new class of enthusiasts is leveraging social media to cater to the growing market of female watch collectors. There's Brynn Wallner, 33, who created @dimepiece.co (a tongue-in-chic name for a cheeky content platform with some 47,000 followers on Instagram alone) after she was laid off from Sotheby's in 2020, and Zoë Abelson, 34, a dealer and founder of Graal, a vintage watch source, who is known as @WatchGirlOffDuty to her 27,000 followers on Instagram. Those followers are so engaged that Abelson created a Whatsapp group that includes more than 500 members just to take shop (see, "Watch this Space," right).
"Yes, it's a place to connect over this passion, but it's also a place where they aren't going to feel intimidated about asking a question about a certain watch," Abelson says.
That's a quirk of the often insular watch industry, which for all its innovation can be forbidding to newcomers. It was once predicted that the iPhone would spell doom for analog wristwatches, but the common thread between these next-gen gurus is that they're using our smallest screens to kick the doors open to future collectors like themselves. And the watch world is embracing them back. It has not gone unnoticed that women bought some $24 million in watches priced $1,200 and above in 2019; that number is expected to grow to nearly $27 million by 2027, according to a study by Allied Market Research.
"Influencers bring a dynamic and personal touch to the educational process," says Rebecca Ross, vice president/head of sales for watches at Christie's. Ross credits them with driving more women to bid on and buy timepieces, and for helping millennial clients become one third of all bidders and buyers in the category, a record. "They provide insights, stories, and perspectives that resonate with a wider audience, including those who might be new to the world of watch collecting."
Ginny Wright, CEO of Audemars Piguet Americas says, "Platforms like TikTok and Instagram lend themselves to providing greater context and richer storytelling for consumers, while also exploring the industry's vast creativity and detailed history in a way that feels digestible." Watches are, for lack of a better word, complicated. They're incredible feats of engineering rooted in a rich 17th-century heritage that deals in scarcity and exclusivity. Historically, the watch world has been something of a secret society, with arcane lingo and prohibitive admission fees. The industry has also predominantly marketed its products to men, who still hold many of the highest C-suite positions. Catherine Rénier, CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre and Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet as of August, are exceptions to the rule.
Today's tick-tock prophets are democratizing points of access by speaking directly, if not exclusively, to women through the lingua franca of the moment: pop culture. For @dimepiece.co, that might mean a deep dive into the Audemars Piguet limited editions owned by LeBron James, whereas Trinh anchored a crowdsourced post about watch engravings with a picture of Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis and her famous Cartier Tank. It was lapped up by more than 73,000 viewers.
"If you see a picture of a cool celebrity wearing a watch, you're drawn into the bigger picture, as opposed to 'This is a Patek 2499, for example, with a particular complication,' which is like speaking a foreign language says Malaika Crawford, the style editor at Hodinkee, the watch news and e-commerce platform. "Instead, they give cultural context clues someone can understand."
For Trinh, celebrity, sports, fashion, and design are lenses that make the watch space more inclusive. By offering a platform, and inviting comments, she's cutting down the fear factor and amplifying a conversation that would otherwise be restricted to a trade show in Geneva or Miami.
"A lot of people see an appointment at an auction house as a place for the one percent, or an appointment at Audemars Piguet as something outside of what they'll get to be part of. But the value that influencers are providing is sharing that those experiences really can be accessible," Trinh Says. Even if, or perhaps because, the price point isn't yet.
In 2020, Trinh may have been on a fashion assistant's salary, but that fateful Cartier gift had already wound up her professional clock. She wanted to learn more but couldn't relate to the sources available. She started @girlsoclock to fill a gap. Her five-year goal is simple: create a community for literacy and communication, and nurture that audience to grow from simply watch-curious to watch-obsessed.
At least one future collector is intrigued. A year ago the depth of my knowledge did not extend beyond a Rolex Datejust, but now that I've entered the chat I find myself daydreaming about a certain vintage gold Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse with a leather band. Then again, maybe I'll shoot for the stars and aim for a Piaget Limelight with a turquoise dial and sapphire set case. Only time will tell.
In the Top Image: TOP ROW, FROM LEFT: CARTIER PANTHERE DE CARTIER ($27,800), CARTIER.COM. OMEGA DE VILLE PRESTIGE ($13,500), OMEGAWATCHES.COM. AUDEMARS PIGUET ROYAL OAK SELF-WINDING ($73,500), AUDEMARSPIGUET.COM. PIAGET VINTAGE WATCH, INQUIRE WITH CLASSIC 55 LLC AT CLASSICWATCHNY.COM
FROM CENTER DOWN: JAEGER-LECOULTRE REVERSO ONE DUETTO WATCH ($13,700), JAEGERLECOULTRE.COM. VAN CLEEF & ARPELS SWEET ALHAMBRA WATCH ($8,850), VANCLEEFARPELS.COM. ROLEX DAY-DATE WATCH ($38,550), ROLEX.COM. APPLE IPHONE 15 PRO (FROM $999), APPLE.COM
This story appears in the February 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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