ACCESSORIES Styles in watches change with times

Collection of watches puts high fashion on the wrist.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Fashion walks a fine line between being functional and frivolous and it's usually up to the accessories to act as the balancing rod.
Watches, always practical (as long as the battery is good), now are making a concerted effort to be in the same stylish category as great handbags, funky earrings and sexy stilettos.
The change has evolved over the past 15 years as watch makers saw consumers expand their wardrobes to embrace different accessories for different occasions, sometimes changing their shoes and purses a few times a day, according to Daniel Lalonde, president and CEO of LVMH Watch and Jewelry North America.
Also, he says, women have become more important to the watch industry since they are more likely to put together a cohesive look from their hair to their toes.
Follow suit
Men are beginning to follow suit, though, using their watches to express their personality while maintaining the big-picture image they want to project. A hint of color peeking out from under a French cuff will hardly disrupt the rest of the outfit.
To court watch-wearers, manufacturers are tapping into fashion trends to create "collections" of watches, just like ready-to-wear, that will have distinctive casual, sports, career and evening watches.
LVMH's Christian Dior Watches, for example, picked up on the biker-chic look and launched the Dior 66, with a chain-link band inspired by old motorcycles and named for Route 66. John Galliano, the world-renowned designer of Christian Dior clothes, also is charged with creating the watch concepts.
"How closely will our fashion watches follow fashion? One hundred percent," Lalonde says.
Movado, another luxury watch maker, recently introduced denim bands to be paired with its signature Museum watch face that features a single dot at 12 o'clock. It's called the SE Denim -- as in sports edition.
There is a challenge, however, for a brand such as Movado, which has been around for more than a century, to incorporate styles that might be in this year and out the next while maintaining its identity, spokeswoman Jill Golden says.
"The watch needs to be an enduring part of the wardrobe. It should be modern and fun now but the design has to transcend whatever today's 'trend' is," Golden says.
Saving face
Offering a wide variety of wristbands is one way to give customers almost unlimited looks while keeping the longevity and integrity of the face and brand intact, explains Keith Rosen, sales director of Piaget, a brand registered since 1943.
Current strap options range from alligator skin, a standby, to sequins and feathers. ("The feathers definitely will turn heads," Rosen says.)
The bands on Piaget's Miss Protocoles can be changed without a tool in a few seconds, Rosen says, but the wearer's look is completely changed if she goes from a dressy gold bracelet to a no-nonsense matte brown leather strap.
Many choices
Watch faces, including those with Arabic numbers and diamond markers, remain fairly classic but it means the Roman dial is no longer the one and only choice. And colored dials, such as pink, he adds, "lend themselves to accessorizing."
But one thing that often sets these luxury watches apart from other accessories is price.
These luxury watches cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars, which makes them an investment that consumers think long and hard about, Movado's Golden says, which, in the current economic climate, actually works in watches' favor.
"A watch has long-term value," she says. "Other expensive fashion purchases might feel too extravagant in a tight economy but this is something that will last."