Do we ever see adverts calling an Audi A3 a “ladies’ car”, a Porsche 911 or Toyota LandCruiser a “men’s car”? Nope. So, when even the notoriously non-PC motor industry refrains from classifying cars in mutually exclusive gender terms, why does the watch industry persist in doing so? Now, men and women are clearly different. But in terms of style, taste and habits, the traits of masculinity and femininity exist on a spectrum; there’s no fixed divide. So, in an age when nobody bats an eyelid at men wearing pink or women wearing trousers – well, apart from a handful of airline CEOs who still insist that the “hostesses” wear skirts – the rigid classification of watches as men’s and women’s (or the old-fashioned and rather patronising “ladies”) is an anachronism. Of course, at the poles of this spectrum, there are watches that exude traditional, typecast masculinity (huge, aggressively butch tool watches) and femininity (delicate, gem-set dress watches), and there’s no reason for the best examples of each genre to compromise. However, in the vast middle between these extremes, there’s no need for gender labels. Why shouldn’t a man wear a modestly sized or gem-set watch? (Let’s remember that until…

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