Patek Philippe has never been a house that chases trends, but its latest women’s watches happen to land at a particularly good moment for small jewel-like timepieces with plenty of personality. With the new Gondolo Ladies First collection, the Swiss watchmaker is bringing back a softly squared Art Deco silhouette—and giving it diamonds, color, and just enough eccentricity to keep things interesting.
The six-piece lineup takes its cues from the Gondolo Ladies First Chronograph introduced in 2009, notable at the time for housing Patek Philippe’s first in-house hand-wound chronograph movement in a women’s model. The new versions are less about mechanical bravado than everyday wearability: All six use slim quartz movements, allowing the rounded cases to sit close to the wrist.
Three models pair polished gold with opaline dials, diamond-set flanges, and textured calfskin straps in bluish gray, chestnut, or beige. The other three push much further into jewelry territory, covering the case, lugs, and dial in hundreds of diamonds, then adding blue topaz, tsavorite, or amethyst hour markers with coordinating glossy straps.
What keeps the collection from feeling overly precious is the shape itself. The rounded-square case has enough architectural weight to offset the stones, while wave-patterned dials and trapezoidal markers add graphic tension.
The launch also arrives alongside Patek Philippe’s new women-focused “I AM. I WEAR.” campaign, with a short film directed by acclaimed filmmakers Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet. Taken together, the message is fairly clear: The house is treating its female clientele less as an extension of its men’s business and more as an audience with tastes of its own, naturally.
For more information, visit patek.com.
