Women have always been active members of the watch community, even during periods when their contributions were not all that easy to discern.
But today, it is obvious that women are among the executives who direct the brands, the artisans who create the timepieces, the media that chronicles the industry and the customers whose purchases keep it thriving.
In the watch world, “there are a lot of women,” said Karishma Karer, the co-founder and editor of the digital watch magazine The Hour Markers. She said that during a previous edition of Dubai Watch Week she met many knowledgeable women. “They know their things. So many interesting women who know what they’re talking about.”
Here are the stories of six women, including Ms. Karer, who are changing the watch industry.
Karishma Karer
Publisher and editor, Mumbai, India
In India’s rapidly growing watch industry, Karishma Karer’s independent publication, The Hour Markers, has a purpose. “People are hungry for information in India, they want to know more,” she said. “The watch market has evolved tremendously. It has gone beyond just the logo and the brand.”
And Ms. Karer, 42, should know as she has spent much of her life watching the industry’s expansion.
“For me, the watch media space is a family business,” she said. “I’m the third generation.” In 1954, her paternal grandfather, Ved Prakash Karer, started the trade magazine Watch Market Review, which still is publishing.
Ms. Karer did part of her studies in Switzerland, and after returning to India, she would still make occasional trips there. “I’d go visit the small manufacturers, the independent watchmakers, the larger big boys, the commercial brands as well.”
In 2010, she established the watch magazine Hands on Time, and in 2021 decided to add a digital publication, founding The Hour Markers with Punit Mehta, the founder of RedBar India, a chapter of the international watch enthusiasts’ organization.
That same year, she also organized a Watch Femme event in Delhi, a gathering inspired by the Swiss organization that promotes women’s voices in horology. “We realized that women have questions, and they’re not afraid to ask,” Ms. Karer said about the event.
Overall, she said, she hopes her publications can continue to attract fans to the watch world. “Through reader forums, social media engagement and interactive features,” she said, “we aim to create a space where enthusiasts can connect, share their passion for watches and exchange knowledge and insights.”
Camille de Rouvray
Watchmaker; Mirmande, France
It was April 2022 when Camille de Rouvray left Paris to open a repair shop in the picturesque village of Mirmande, perched on a hilltop in southeastern France.
In Paris, she had graduated from the Lycée Diderot’s watchmaking program in 2020 and — with two of her fellow graduates — then opened the Horlogerie du Passage, a watch repair shop. But “I wanted more space and more peace to work,” she said.
Ms. de Rouvray bought a lot of secondhand equipment to set up an atelier in her house in the countryside and tapped the network of watchmakers and professionals from around the world that she had been building since her student days.
“I was a bit afraid when I first set up in the Drôme, because you have to seek out customers more than in Paris,” she said, using the official name of the region. “But word of mouth spreads quickly, and there aren’t many of us working the way I do.”
She also has been getting business from other watchmakers who need repairs that they can’t handle, like the broken wheels in a watch from 1780 that she worked on in January.
Ms. de Rouvray, 43, has a strong interest in the history of watchmaking, which is natural as her family has long been associated with the industry. “The first watchmaker in my family was Louis XV’s watchmaker,” she said, referring to the 18th-century artisan Jean-André Lepaute.
And, she said, “I’m mainly interested in clocks and antique objects. There’s a real dialogue with the object, which I’m passionate about, which really moves me.”
As a result, Ms. de Rouvray frequently travels to Belgium to work with a veteran watchmaker whom she interned with at school, now tackling projects such as recreating a perpetual calendar from an early 17th-century clock. And she also often helps a French specialist who maintains the clocks at the châteaus of Fontainebleau, Versailles and Chantilly.
“Working for public heritage is different than working for the private sector,” Ms. de Rouvray said. “It’s for the community, for future generations, it’s about preserving objects so that future generations can enjoy them.”
Naomi Maruyama
Reporter, Tokyo
Naomi Maruyama has spent the last five years as a co-host of a weekly online program about watches for Kodansha, a large Japanese publisher. “Five years ago, they approached me as they were looking for a co-host,” she said. “They wanted to make it an inclusive channel and find someone who could give a woman’s point of view.”
Ms. Maruyama, 36, studied the fashion business at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, then began to cover men’s fashion as a freelance journalist. She also used her English skills, acquired from living in the United States as a teenager, to work as a teacher and translator.
Now, she said, “I have the rare opportunity to be introduced to many watch brands on a weekly basis.” And, thanks to her English skills, she also was appointed host of the publisher’s English-language watch channel, Watch Spirits Tokyo, on YouTube.
While she is often one of the few women — and sometimes the only one — at watch events in Japan, she said there were many female collectors in the country, and they are extremely interested in its activities. “The culture is changing,” she said, “and I am sure there will be more women involved from now on.”
As for her own goals, she said that she wanted to spread more knowledge about watches, especially to beginners. “It’s always OK to ask questions. People who work in the industry actually enjoy your questions as they might not realize that certain things they’re used to are interesting to others.”
Viki Garcia
Client adviser, Los Angeles
Viki Garcia has been around watches for as long as she can remember. Born and raised in Miami, “my paternal grandparents are Cuban and instilled in me from a young age the importance of culture, along with an appreciation for thoughtful and functional design,” said Ms. Garcia, 29.
A few years ago, after working at some luxury resale businesses and as a freelance wardrobe stylist, she decided that she wanted to refine her personal watch collection. “But I realized that I no longer had anyone in my immediate network that I could discuss this with,” she said.
It was around that time that she met Zoe Abelson, a vintage watch dealer. And Ms. Abelson introduced her to WatchBox, a pre-owned watch sales platform, which hired her in 2021 as a client adviser in Los Angeles. (In November, WatchBox merged with some brick-and-mortar jewelers to become the 1916 Company.)
“I feel so lucky to have pursued several passions in my life and turned them into a job,” she said. “It’s great to meet with like-minded collectors and newcomers alike because the space is very niche. I think we’re so deep in it, we sometimes forget how niche it is.”
She added that she wouldn’t be working in the watch industry if it weren’t for people who share the same passion, but also as a result of women she called “incredibly inclusive females.”
“In Los Angeles, where there are very few women in the industry, my aim is to hold more female-centered events,” she said, citing as an example a recent dinner at the studio of the photographer Melanie Pullen, where she showed guests several of her favorite watches from the company’s current sales stock. “Representation is still low. But seeing it grow in the last few years, and even in the last few months, it feels nice to be included.”
Ms. Garcia said she hoped she could inspire the younger generation “to step into something that has been around for ages, but maybe hasn’t felt so inclusive. There is space for us here.”
Mona Qiu
Watch specialist, Shanghai
Mona Qiu’s job as a specialist for Christie’s involves interacting with exceptional timepieces. “You get a chance to touch some of the rarest watches that you normally would not have the chance to see in the secondary market, which I feel it’s a blessing for me,” she said.
Ms. Qiu, 36, was born and raised in Shanghai and had always been drawn to mechanical things. “I liked to assemble mechanical car toys when I was a kid,” she said.
In 2006 she came to the United States and in 2011 went to work at Cartier in a customer relations role, supporting its e-commerce operation with her fluency in Mandarin. In 2014 she moved to Christie’s, helping to develop its online sales, and two years later graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in integrated marketing.
At Christie’s, Ms. Qiu said, “we now have over 10 online auctions across the globe yearly.”
She returned to China in 2020 to help develop Christie’s luxury profile there and last year was promoted to a watch specialist’s role in Hong Kong. She now divides her time between that city and Shanghai, working on consignments, evaluations, authentication and marketing. Referring to her role as a watch specialist, she said, “basically, from the moment when you take in a watch until you successfully find the right buyer, I oversee the entire journey.”
Last fall, for example, she prepared the catalog for the Philippe and Elisabeth Dufour Foundation auction, a live event in Hong Kong that raised more than 10 million Hong Kong dollars ($1.28 million) for the Swiss watchmaker’s charity.
“We have a global team of specialists. It’s true that there are only three of us that are female. But I think we have our own very unique perspective,” she said. “When we look at watches, our voices definitely play a key role in curating what we want to present to the market nowadays.”
Vanessa Lecci
Enameler, Peseux, Switzerland
Watch fans may not know her name, but it is likely they have seen her work on timepieces such as the Patek Philippe World Time Complications, where Vanessa Lecci used fine gold wires and enamel work in her signature cloisonné technique to create maps for the dial.
“I accept the qualities and faults of my job because I’m so in love with it,” she said. “My duty is, as in all marriages, to make sure that the flame always stays alight.”
And she means it almost literally: Ms. Lecci, 52, is one of the few specialists in an enamel called Grand Feu, or Great Fire, a type of dial finishing that fuses glass to metal at more than 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit).
Ms. Lecci was born and raised in Lecce, in southern Italy, and studied fine arts. But it was volleyball, which she played at a high level during her studies, that led to a contract to play in the Swiss town of Yverdon-les-Bains, near the western end of Lake Neuchâtel.
In 2002, after her sports career had ended, she began working at Cartier, first as a gem setter and later, after she had become a manager, to develop an in-house enamel workshop. Later she worked at Girard-Perregaux and Patek Philippe, then decided in 2011 to become an independent enamel specialist. She made the move, she said, “to be free to practice and develop enamel in my own way and from all my background; to experiment with new paths, too, to get out of my comfort zone in search of something that doesn’t yet exist.”
She now has a home workshop as well as another nearby, where she holds master classes in artistic enameling.
She also teaches master’s classes in watch design at the Haute École d’Art et de Design, better known as HEAD-Genève, which markets itself as having Europe’s only diploma program in watch design.
“In my workshops, the place of women in this industry is often a topic of discussion with my students and is close to my heart,” she said. “To the young women who will soon be starting their careers, I advise them not to be afraid to impose their point of view, their ideas, their disagreements, not to conform, and try to break the codes of a watchmaking industry sometimes lacking in creative innovation.”
Women everywhere, she said, should always remember the watchword: “Dare!”
The post Six Women in the Watch World Tell Their Stories appeared first on New York Times.
