The Echo Chamber of Luxury Watches
The luxury watch industry prizes originality while perfecting imitation—a quiet mirror world of craft repeating itself.
The Reflection Problem
I once held in my hand a stainless-steel sports watch from a lesser-known Swiss brand—its bezel, bracelet, and dial quietly nodded to the unmistakable geometry of a model from Rolex. At first glance it felt like the earnest pursuit of craft: finely brushed surfaces, polished bevels, and a Swiss automatic movement glancing through a sapphire case-back.
But at a closer look, the recognition sank in: the indices, the bracelet taper, even the way the lume-markers sat—all seemed to echo a pre-existing archetype rather than carve something new. In that moment the illusion shattered: this watch did not meditate on heritage, it traded in familiarity. What I held was a reflection of a reflection. And in the quiet veneration of that aesthetic, I glimpsed a central irony of contemporary haute horlogerie—the great contradiction that the luxury watch industry, so anchored in heritage and uniqueness, is increasingly defined by imitation.
Growth Without Innovation
Beyond the boutiques of Geneva and London, the numbers paint a broader backdrop. The global luxury-watch market in 2024 was worth roughly USD 53.7 billion and is projected to grow toward USD 59.9 billion in 2025. But growth does not necessarily signal innovation.
In an oversupplied field, brands scramble to differentiate, and yet default to visual and mechanical recipes that have proven themselves safe. The dive-watch form, the steel-sports model, the three-hand automatic with rotating bezel—all have become templates rather than breakthroughs. As one commentary puts it, “brands copy ideas all the time.”
Archetypes and Their Shadows
That dynamic plays out in design. The archetypal dive watch from Rolex—the Submariner—is perhaps the most imitated timepiece in watchmaking history. Its silhouette—rotating bezel, three-o’clock crown, bracelet of flat links—is everywhere. The blogs listing “affordable alternatives” are legion.
Meanwhile, analytical pieces argue that after a century of design precedents, the odds are stacked against those who truly wish to depart from convention.
This repetition is not malicious but structural. According to research from the SC Johnson College of Business and INSEAD, media coverage that groups brands together rather than highlighting distinct identities tends to boost market performance—effectively rewarding similarity rather than originality. There’s a commercial logic to looking the part, being comparable, rather than being radically novel.
And so brands converge on the visual and mechanical tropes associated with luxury rather than re-examine them.
The Collector’s Dilemma
For the collector or enthusiast, this creates a layered discomfort. Desire is stoked by the promise of uniqueness—own something rare—yet the objects themselves are built atop a shared language of forms.
Even independent watchmakers lament that making “nothing like anything else” grows harder within a tradition that already spans a century of icons. The businessman’s watch becomes less about seeing something new and more about seeing something “right”: familiar, reference-worthy, and quote-comparable.
When Value Mirrors Form
Then there is the irony of the pre-owned market. In the 2025 update on the secondary segment from Chrono24, we learn that high-end pre-owned values have cooled from their 2022 peak, reverting to 2021 levels.
When new watches across brands become visually interchangeable, the speculative edge of ownership fades. If one brand’s sports diver mirrors another’s, why pay a premium? Here the imitation economy bites the value chain: originality bolsters scarcity, and if little distinguishes brand codes, scarcity erodes.
At the same time, counterfeiting and homages thrive within the same visual terrain. Swiss customs estimate tens of millions of counterfeit watches each year.
Heritage as Repetition
It is worth recalling precedent. In the 1970s, the “quartz crisis” upended Swiss mechanical watchmaking. The response was not only a recommitment to craft but a consolidation of the visual codes that communicated luxury: steel sports cases, integrated bracelets, mechanical movements, complications.
Those codes became templates that multiple brands could rally around. Today we see a second act: the heritage codes persist, but market saturation turns them into a near-monopoly of style. The nuance of craft becomes the ideology of similarity.
Symbols and Their Weakening
Culturally, this shift matters. Luxury watches are both functional and symbolic—they say I belong, I succeeded, I have taste. But when everyone wears something drawn from the same design vocabulary, the signifier weakens.
The wristwatch risks becoming a badge of membership rather than a declaration of discernment. The proliferation of homage watches further muddies the water: they do not claim to be originals, yet they underscore how entrenched the template is.
Comfort and Danger
For brands, the imitation economy is comforting and dangerous. Safe design languages reduce risk and streamline production—but they also diminish distinctiveness, making the ascent to iconic status harder and perhaps less meaningful.
Building and sustaining value requires coherence and identity; when many players share similar codes, differentiation blurs.
The Greenhouse of Reflections
Inside the industry, there’s a muted recognition that the story must shift. Oversupply meets tired aesthetics; the bubble-like growth of the early 2020s secondary market has receded; the value of craft needs a new vocabulary.
Yet brands continue cycling through the same forms. Dive watch, steel case, bracelet, rotating bezel. Sports watch, integrated bracelet, blue dial. It is the formula that built the market—but also the formula that now constrains it.
Ultimately, the view this exposes is stark: the luxury watch industry is less a garden of individual artisans than a greenhouse of reflections, where every house style breeds its copies and originality is measured not by difference but by nuance.
The luxury consumer, taught to prize exclusivity, ends up drawn into a mirror room of sameness. The next time you glance at your wrist, ask if what you see is an original or simply an echo—and understand that in the imitation economy, there is still value, but the story is no longer about creation so much as recognition.
About the Author
Sergio Galanti is an independent writer and brand strategist exploring the intersections of luxury, culture, and time. As editor of WatchDossier, he examines watchmaking through the lenses of craft, history, and strategy.
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