Sometimes called a purse watch or travel watch, this hybrid-looking category of timepieces remains undervalued and not fully understood.
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16 October 2025
The Quircky Backstory Of The Purse Watches
We all know that before the dominance of wristwatches came the reign of pocket watches, but did you know that in between, during this transition, a new type of watch tried to make a name for itself?
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, international travel, strong design movements, and the desire to create fashionable and practical items were enough to push watch brands to design intelligent, discreet, and stylish watches.
As its name suggests, the “purse” watch symbolized the pursuit of modernity that thrived during this period. Many brands sought inventive ways to hide and reveal time within a transportable object.
We can think of Rolex, Vacheron Constantin, Cartier, Juvenia, Tavannes, and many others — each striving to create a unique and intricate opening mechanism. Most of the time, the cases protecting the watches were decorated with engravings, rubies, diamonds, lacquer, or even exotic leathers. These watches were attached to a purse, a pair of pants, or a jacket, making them a true hybrid between pocket and wristwatches.
The most successful collection was the Ermeto by Movado, a true triumph offering a new way of displaying and winding time. Another remarkable example is the Tavannes buckle watch, the ultimate travel companion — by flipping the buckle, the wearer could instantly read the time on demand. In other words, these watches were “smart” before smartwatches, though their reign, sadly, lasted only a decade or two at most.