Why the luxury watch industry is embracing the 1980s again

Thanks to the 1980s, the luxury watch industry is learning how to have fun again.

Watch brands are facing some major headwinds at the moment: the cost-of-living crisis, geopolitical uncertainty and a corresponding price hike in precious metals to name just three. Still, as the industry prepares to gather in Geneva in April for its annual Watches & Wonders jamboree, CEOs have reason to feel cautiously optimistic. There will always be individuals such as Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest man, who boasts a collection of Richard Mille watches said to be worth around $25m (not including the million-dollar timepiece he reportedly presented to Lionel Messi on a recent visit to the sub-continent). But look elsewhere and you can feel a growing sense of democratisation across the industry as it looks back to the 1980s and rediscover the sense of fun that this once-maligned decade represents.

One of the most important dates in the modern Swiss watch business came on March 1, 1983, when the first Swatch watch was launched. The Swatch comeback in 2026 feels less like a revival and more like a well-timed reminder. In an era when mechanical watchmaking has drifted toward ever-higher prices and ever-smaller audiences, Swatch, credited with saving an entire industry, returns to the centre ground with the same disarming confidence that defined its original 1980s ascent: colour, clarity and an almost stubborn belief that joy belongs on the wrist.

Quartz is no longer an apology; plastic is no longer a compromise. Younger buyers raised on collaboration culture and limited drops understand Swatch instinctively. The brand speaks their language: playful but precise, democratic yet design-led.

Another welcome reinvention is TAG Heuer’s Formula 1 range, originally launched in 1986, and for many, their first introduction to luxury watches. What makes the revival compelling today, however, is not nostalgia alone. The original watches of that era were products of the quartz era, corporate modernism, and the gleam of new materials. Today’s reinterpretations emerge from a different climate – one defined by tactility, longevity and a suspicion of excess.

A sector of the industry that has stood up well in recent years is that for jewellery pieces. Manon Hagie, a sales director of watch auctions at Sotheby’s Geneva, says: “It’s still a niche area, but we can see that there’s more interest for jewellery watches,” she said. “They’re still underrated, I think, but the fact that the main brands are coming up with new models this year reflects the beginning of a trend.”

The blurring of gender-specific design has spurred the trend. “The market is changing, because men used to see watches as a very engineered thing because of the mechanism. It’s very nice to see that they are now also appreciating [jewellery] watches for just the beauty of them, including gem setting.

Unsurprisingly Cartier is one brand that will benefit from this trend. The original Panthère was launched in 1983 as one of the world’s first unabashedly unisex watches and its design distilled Cartier’s feline emblem into something wearable, sensual and unmistakably modern. The style played with combining contrasting metals and diamond-studded bezels, but its enduring elegance has always rested on a delicate balance: watchmaking precision softened by the languid grace of jewellery.

And let’s not forget digital. The return of the Seiko Rotocall, with its octagonal rotating bezel – first introduced in 1982 – is less a deliberately retro exercise in nostalgia than a celebration of the imagination inspired by space missions.