Did you know that Tiffany & Co. used to be something of a powerhouse in watches? In 1847, the New York jeweller started to retail imported watches and, after seeing huge demand for these finely crafted timepieces, began partnering with the best in Switzerland. Eventually, Tiffany would open its own assembly workshop in Switzerland in 1868, and in 1874 a full-fledged watchmaking manufacture in Geneva to create timepieces for itself.
As time went on, though, the house of Tiffany— known for offering some of the finest timepieces in America, but famed throughout the world for its sublime jewellery and silver—decided to leave horology behind. It sold its manufacture to the then-nascent watch company Patek, Philippe & Cie. and charted its own path to become the Tiffany & Co. we know today.
With a heritage like that, however, Tiffany has in recent years decided in earnest to wake this sleeping beauty and give its watches a new lease of life. Broadly, the direction that the brand is taking is to lean into its identity as a jeweller first and foremost. Much of the modern collection has been developed by interpreting its signature jewels as objects of beauty for the wrist that also tell the time. One exception to that arc, however, is the limited-edition Tiffany Timer watch that the brand introduced this year.
Cased in platinum, worn on a leather strap, dotted with discreet baguette diamond hour markers on a lacquered Tiffany Blue dial, this watch is powered by an El Primero movement that gives it its chronograph function. It is as classic as it gets—exceptional for demonstrating a certain kind of apogee in watchmaking. The fine horology field can be highly traditional and so often the test of ability is whether a brand can make a simple thing well.
In fact, the Tiffany Timer is a callback to one of the brand’s coups in horological history. In 1866, demand for fine timepieces in the US led to the debut of a pocket watch with a chronograph timer function. It was to become the brand’s first stopwatch, named the Tiffany & Co. Timing Watch, and two years later rechristened the Tiffany & Co. Timer as the brand debuted its watch assembly workshop. Limited to 60 pieces worldwide, this new Tiffany Timer is not so much a run-out-and-get-it model, more a highly collectible assertion of heritage.
The rest of the brand’s watch collection, meanwhile, offers plenty of jewelled beauty that could only be Tiffany’s. A range of new models introduced this year shows it best. Its diamond expertise, for instance, is reflected in the Eternity Baguette, a cocktail watch that could well replace a diamond bracelet for a black tie evening. Bezels are set with baguette-cut diamonds or coloured gemstones, and the hour markers are set with fancy-cut diamonds or gemstones. Even the sides of the case are snow-set with diamonds, and the crowns are formed from a diamond solitaire in the brand’s raised six-prong Tiffany setting.
The designs of Jean Schlumberger, which have been the house’s aesthetic bellwether for the last few years, have also started to influence the watches. Tiffany & Co. has been translating the jewel nature and aesthetics of Schlumberger design to timepieces, maintaining in many cases the integrity of the original jewellery albeit in miniaturised form. Take the Sixteen Stone watch, which replicates the famous Jean Schlumberger ring design— pairs of diamonds on a band punctuated by gold cross stitches—on the dial.
The latest Schlumberger hall-of-famer to join the collection, though, is the Enamel watch. More precisely, the paillonné enamel Croisillon bangles that were a favourite of Jackie Kennedy. These bangles are entrancingly beautiful, crafted with coloured enamel over gold or silver leaf to give it a shimmer and depth. It’s a complex technique, recreated in miniature and placed on the dials of these watches. And because one of the more alluring things about a Schlumberger enamel bangle was seeing them move on the wrist, the ones on the watch are set so they are free to rotate.
The Vogue Singapore April 2026 ‘Retrofuture’ edition is available online and on newsstands.
