I'm not sure how and when it started as such, but there was a definitely a switch from simple and smaller classic watch style to a larger size and for some brands larger with a blingy gawdy look. I do think most of the established watchmakers (and a lot of the high street Fashion Brands) have kept the stylish simpler look but increased their sizes, where say 36mm was the norm now it's more 38/40mm for a clean dress watch (although still a place for 36mm) and 43/44 for bigger divers and Chronographs (especially autos), which if done right isn't too bad.
Where it gets silly is when you have these brands on IW that aren't watchmakers they have dress watches at 43/45mm and Divers/Chronographs at 45/50mm+ with outlandish, gawdy flashy colours etc, shouting look at me, rather than just a simply stylish look. They've also seemed to have forgotten what a watch is for, to tell the time, some of them seem to want to make it really hard to actually see at a glance what the time is.
Earnshaw is bad for that, some of their skeleton watches it's really hard to see the hands against the movement.
Away from IW was just thinking of Invicta there, who on the one hand have the decent pro diver range (submariner homage) in 38/40mm but then have some the most ugly huge watches (up to 70mm for their Sea Hunter, you could imagine in the rest of their ranges.
Who the hell wears these things. I suppose great for self defence, just swing your wrist in a muggers direction and you'd knock em out.
INVICTA Bolt Men 52mm Stainless Steel Steel Blue+Red+Gold+Steel dial G2665Z Automatic
www.invictawatch.com
INVICTA Sea Hunter Men 58mm Stainless Steel Gold Charcoal dial Z60 Quartz
www.invictawatch.com
away from shopping TV, thankfully still masses of small (and not so small), simple and stylish watches out there.
I did email them a while back asking them to state case sizes as big watches aren't for everybody, oops
. No prizes for guessing who.
