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Watchmakers Are Catching Up to Cartier’s Small-Case Instincts

Vintage collecting, comfort and fashion have reversed the industry's long march toward oversized cases, and even brands built on bulk now sell compact versions of their signature designs.

For much of the past two decades, luxury watches seemed to move in only one direction: bigger. Cases stretched past 40 millimeters and sports watches grew increasingly imposing as brands built entire identities around watches designed to announce themselves from across the room. Now the pendulum is swinging back. This reversal began in the second half of the 2010s, as vintage watches and their smaller proportions returned to favor, and it accelerated in the early 2020s alongside the resurgence of Cartier and growing interest in shaped, jewelry-like designs. Today the trend appears to be reaching something of a peak, with compact watches showing up at nearly every level of the industry, from tiny, jewel-like pieces to downsized versions of models that not long ago would have been unthinkable below 42 millimeters. Vintage influence and comfort are part of the story, but watches are also increasingly worn as accessories that sit somewhere between timepiece, jewelry and fashion.

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Arguably, no brand illustrates the moment better than Cartier, whose shaped cases and jewelry-first designs anticipated much of what the wider market is now embracing. The maison has more than a century of history with compact wristwatches, from the Santos in 1904 to the Baignoire in 1912 and the Tank in 1917, and it never fully joined the later race toward oversized cases. Even the Santos de Cartier, one of the brand’s largest and sportiest core collections, tops out at........

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