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Hollywood’s most fashionable know that the best way to influence style is to disrupt expectations, especially in the way a piece is supposed to be worn. Take notes from Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Julia Fox, and Emma Chamberlain and watch this space.
Taylor Swift doesn’t have to do much to break the internet. Case in point: at the Grammy Awards earlier this month, she wore a custom-made Lorraine Schwartz watch as a choker, set to 12am, in a reference to her album “Midnights”, which went on to win three awards that night. Swifties love an Easter Egg, and this one was particularly precious.
Taylor isn’t the only A-lister making watch brands tick, by advocating wearing timepieces away from the wrist. In June 2023, Rihanna wore a six-figure Jacob & Co watch as a choker to Pharrell Williams’s debut show for Louis Vuitton. In November that year, she chose another Jacob & Co design for the Last Vegas Formula One: a diamond-encrusted timepiece that she wore around her ankle. At the spring/summer 2024 fashion weeks, Julia Fox and Emma Chamberlain also embraced the trend, Fox choosing sandals, a mini-skirt and bandeau top strewn with vintage watches by Hodakova to wear during NYFW, and Chamberlain wearing a Cartier Baignoire watch around her neck to the Miu Miu show.
Cartier has also unveiled a series of watches designed for new horological erogenous zones, in the form of a brooch, lapel pin and, (skater girls rejoice!) a cool carabiner clip, part of the Cartier Libre Polymorph collection. Where to wear them? “Wherever you want,” says Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s director of image, style and heritage. The designs display all of Cartier’s Art Deco, geometric and colourful signatures, sparkling with coral, moonstones, emeralds diamonds and onyx. The brooch resembles a feline paw, one of its nail shaped moonstones opening to reveal a mini-watch. The chunky carabiner clip hangs with a diamond-swathed watch which is bookended with juicy beads in turquoise and black and blue lapis lazuli.
“Wearing time in a different way has been a constant preoccupation at Cartier,” adds Rainero, referring to the many brooch watches in Cartier’s rich archive. Across history, they have been worn on the shoulders of gowns, to emphasise the décolleté, pinned on skirts and nestled in the hair. Princess Diana and Audrey Hepburn also experimented with ways to wear the wristwatch. Princess Diana’s Saudi Sapphire choker, which she also wore as a headband, was, in fact, pieced together using an oval sapphire that was cut from a ring and placed in a watch’s diamond frame. In the hectic party scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the audience watches as a party goer bends down to check the time on a watch that is fastened to a slender ankle.
British Vogue’s styling verdict? Fasten Cartier’s carabiner clip timepiece to the waistband of spring/summmer 2024’s high-rise trouser silhouette, à la Loewe and Phoebe Philo, or bring a precious touch to the season’s preppiest polo shirt trend with a lapel pin.
“When time itself is displayed in such a playful way, one doesn’t feel oppressed by it, one feels freer,” says Rainero. Rihanna and Taylor will have to attest to that.
This article was originally published on British Vogue.
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