As the festive season pulls closer and the year draws to a close, many will start to reflect on the last 12 months. Part of that reflection also means looking forward to the things we anticipate for 2025.
For me, that includes making some predictions about the wonderful world of watches. I'm a huge fan of watches and have seen the market ebb and flow over the last few years, with different styles coming in and out of fashion.
Everything from green dials to dive watches have had a moment in the sun over recent years, as the changing tides of fashion bring new goodies to market. In 2025, there's one thing I'm predicting above anything else – even smaller watches.
Perhaps that's not too much of a revelation. Over the last few years, we've seen dial sizes start to shrink anyway. Gone are the days when a gargantuan 47mm pilot watch was en vogue – these days, it's all about neat, tidy and dainty case sizes.
That's certainly affected the production of new watches, but it's also prominent in the tastes shaping vintage watches. These older pieces are often much smaller anyway, but they've also been cropping up more and more on the wrists of celebrities and tastemakers.
I think that popularity will continue to influence modern watchmaking, with more and more smaller pieces hitting the market. 36mm appears to be the de facto choice these days, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some 34mm models – like the recently released Nomos Club Sport Neomatik 34 – appear, and possibly even smaller.
It's not just about the case diameter, either. Vintage pieces tend to be a great deal slimmer from top to bottom. That's something which really isn't all that common on modern watches, and I think that's going to change.
As I write this, I'm wearing a 1959 dress watch from a company called Creation. It's fairly nondescript and almost wholly uninteresting, but it was a bargain mechanical timepiece – both in its day and when I subsequently snapped it up some sixty years later.
Yet even as a budget piece in the late 50s, it sits just millimetres thick. It's the kind of classy case thickness I've only ever seen on top tier watches in the modern age – think Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe.
If a brand like that could achieve a look like that back then, there's absolutely no reason why modern watches can't do the same.
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