There are two things you need to know about me. Firstly, I have tiny wrists in proportion to the rest of my body (I'm not kidding; my Mum had them checked when I was a baby because she was so worried!) but I can do cartwheels and handstands just fine (the important stuff I know!), but push-ups on the other hand...forget it! I totally blame my small wrists for that, not my complete lack of pectoral strength :P
Secondly, my watch addiction can be entirely described as hereditary at this point, since both my Dad and brother have sizeable collections themselves and my Mum is slowly catching up. What can I say "watches are a girl's best friend!" no really! Although I do love jewellery (fake/real = pOtato/potAto) a watch is my go-to accessory on a daily basis (I don't understand people with their phone pocket watches...but hey, Apple watches are totally bringing it back to the wrist, we WIN!).
Anyway, these two things mean that I have to get most of my straps adjusted and also smaller faces suit me better, not that I've let that stop me from buying watches with big faces...if you've got it, flaunt it! Also, my collection is rather sizeable, but each one (of the expensive ones) was either my main Christmas or birthday present, to each their own! Let's get started:
P.S. Like my fake cactuses/cacti (I know I can't even keep those alive!) and fake marble background?!...It's official I've entered the #bbloggers clichéd background world and I'm loving it! :P
THE SILVERS:
Emporio Armani
Growing out of the Swatch Flik Flak phase (leave in the comments below if that was your first watch type too) my first "proper" watch was a silver-coloured one that I remember getting from Chapelle at The Ashford Designer Outlet for £30, but for the life of me I can't remember its brand (but it did come with a matching bracelet). However it was what I wore for most of my teenage years (it got quite scratched up in the end) since silver went with everything! This was before the rose gold revolution, which we will get to later. :P
Because of this my Dad got me a "fancy" silver watch to wear on special occasions. Now as I didn't choose this one myself I have no idea how much it cost, but a quick look at the Emporio Armani women watches online would put it at around £150, but my Dad is a bargain hunter so I doubt that's how much was paid. It was most probably from an Outlet store for much less than that (I highly recommend Outlets if you're thinking of getting a fancy watch, they often have some great deals).
The strap of the Emporio Armani watch is the same width as the face, which gives this watch quite a "bulky" look, but it's still thin enough that no one would confuse it for a man's watch, I personally love it (you're going to be hearing a lot of that, it is my watch collection after all).
Marks and Spencer
Next we have the Marks and Spencer one which comes in between £18-£30. I love this one because it really is an embellished bracelet! The strap is very small and fits like a bangle bracelet (not malleable like a standard strap) with a dainty square face, that if you look at closely you will see is a pale lavender colour. I love this one because if watches could ever be categorised as jewellery this would be it! Small, with a silver shine and a hint of colour, love it!
THE BLACKS:
Accessories at New Look (both of them)
The one on the right is the first one that you'll see comes in the "gigantic" face format. Now it does look incredibly bulky on my wrist but because I have bony wrists, I think I can get away with it, it's certainly a distinctive look! I especially like this one because even though it has a monochrome design, the face gives it all the "shebang" it needs! Surrounded by a circle of glittery stones - I don't think they're diamonds at £19.99 - the face also has 3 fake sub-dials, which gives it a rather high-tech look. I love pairing this with my black dungarees and turtleneck jumpers (3rd look/outfit in my Stila Soul Palette post).
The horizontal one is from New Look too, but with a slight alteration...the strap. When I went ferreting through my jewellery box (where I keep my cheap watches) in preparation for this post I found this watch, and I remember having cut off the strap either because it was broken or because it was very ugly, can't remember which?! But I kept the watch itself because I love the black and silver minimalism so much. Then I sent my Dad on a mission (he knows his watch shops) for a plain matte black leather strap, and I think we can all agree he delivered! This watch is now perfect and exactly what I envisioned for the face...round of applause for the best Dad in the world! So total price would be £12.99 plus strap price.
THE BLUES:
C&A (the darker one)
I love this one (sensing a theme no?) because of its bright pop of colour (it's brighter IRL). My second "gigantic" faced watch but this one is deceptive as the dial is quite a bit smaller than the face would have you believe. Not my favourite face from my collection if I'm honest, I really just bought this one for its strap...I love matching my nails to it with Maybelline's Forever Strong in 635 Surreal. I bought this one in a C&A in Paris (back in 2012 in my exchange year at the Sorbonne), which had a much larger selection of clothes/accessories/jewellery than the C&As I've been to in Belgium, but it wasn't much more than €10 (I recently had to superglue the strap back together, so you can tell).
Marks and Spencer
This one was bought last minute for a wedding last summer. It matched my blue lace dress and high heels perfectly as shown in my Best Dressed Wedding Guest post (you've been warned before about my matching lunacy...the nails matched too...shhhhh). The only issue was my wrist. Way too big, I needed several holes put in, luckily, we were in another Outlet Centre the day before the wedding and many jewellery stores later (they didn't have the hole punch thingy) the Fossil store kindly did it for me, free of charge! :) I have since invested in my very own leather hole punch (super cheap here) which has come very handy for shoe straps too!
THE PINKS:
Olivia Burton
I've only discovered Olivia Burton watches rather recently (last two years or so), and they're exactly what was missing from women's watches for years. The last one in my "gigantic" series, the artistic faces is what really drew me in (although I really love her classic dial from the Wonderland Collection too), and there are several more I would really love from her brand but at ballpark £80 each, I've got a few more Christmases and birthdays to go (In the meantime New Look have some decent looking dupes). I picked this "pink" one from her Woodland Collection because I love the face and the bird reminds me of my "Snow White" adventure, every time I look at it!
Now as my Dad is quite the gardener (green thumb not inherited; cough...cough, fake cacti!) we happen to have an awesome cherry tree (that I helped plant when I was 8) at the front of our house near my bedroom window. Bird food happens to hang from said tree and attracts the exact same birds as the one depicted on this watch (a Great Tit...hey, I didn't come up with the name!). Nothing special about that. But one bird in particular was insisting on building a nest on my window ledge and repeatedly tapping my window every morning around 5am (for a night owl like me this was far from ideal) for food I think (even when the bird feeders were full). So every morning I had to destroy said beginning of nest because my window ledge is angled and I didn't want future eggs to slide off (neighbouring cats also have easy access), plus I have a blind to open and close. Needless to say, it was several months of being woken up "à la Cinderella" fashion, before it eventually gave up and I was able to sleep like a true Disney princess again. But those several Snow White moments, when I and the bird looked at each other through the glass whilst it kept tapping will never be forgotten!
Ted Baker
I love this soft baby pink watch from Ted Baker, although I almost didn't get to have it on my birthday, as it was so well hidden by my parents that they had technically lost it! We all had to frantically search the house to find it! Needless to say it was found and the crisis of potentially having lost £150 was averted :P The only thing I would say about this watch is that it has the most difficult clasp to adjust that I have ever come across (a butterfly clasp). It took me a whole week to figure out how to adjust the strap to fit my wrist, but we got there in the end! #BlondeMoment
DKNY
This is my chocolate watch! I first saw it in a DKNY ad in a magazine and although I loved the shape and colour of the strap the magazine photo had the face tinged slightly green, an odd combo but a possibility and far from the ideal (all of the watch being bronze chocolate coloured). So I wanted to see it in person to see if it really did have a green-ish face. So during my last Christmas at Uni in Edinburgh, I looked for it in all the jewellery stores on Princes Street and there in the Fraser Hart window it stood. I couldn't see any green so I asked if I could try it on and it was perfect! It has a pearled face hence the green tint in the ad. Mine is however mostly chocolate bronze with an orange pearlessence (also the tiniest bit of green), I think each watch would be unique in this collection as you don't know what pearlessence pattern/colour you might end up with, I was lucky! The only drawback to this watch is its battery life, I had to change the battery two months after I bought it and again a year after that, the Fossil watch (coming up next) I bought a year before this DKNY one has yet to need a battery change. :/ But if I remember correctly, I think I got this watch slightly discounted, still £150, so can't really complain.
THE ROSE GOLDS:
Fossil (both of them)
My first Fossil watch (on the left) is what started my rose gold revolution, back in 2011-2012. While everybody else was buying "gigantic" Michael Kors watches I opted for a slightly smaller more understated rose gold Fossil watch. I bought this in Paris in Les Halles for €150 I think, but this has quickly become my most trusted watch (long battery life) and since it's the only one I own that also tells the date, it was my lucky exam one too! I think we've all been at an exam and just invented dates because stress blanked out the real one, or you're so anxious to start scribbling down answers you're not paying much attention to that detail (days and months are easy to forget, but I think I put 1956 as a year once, and only realised it when it was corrected and handed back to me...oops!).
The one on the right is my second Fossil watch (I was so impressed with the first) and like all the other pink ones I own, it also has a rose gold rim to its face (Can't get enough of rose gold! Not a fan of normal gold...too yellow for me). More of a turquoise, it could still be categorised as a blue, but it just didn't look good with my other blues, I love wearing this one (and my lighter coloured ones) in the summer. Speaking of which, that's exactly when I got this one, on a summer holiday in Portugal (in the Forum Algarve to be exact) but you don't have to travel all the way there...Fossil still make them in this style for £95, so go check out their site!
So there you have it, my watch collection! Hope I didn't bore you to death and it may have given you some ideas on future Christmas or birthday presents, and why not a Valentine's day present too if you have a special someone in your life. #singlepringle #foreveralone
What was your first watch?
Any memorable stories attached to a piece of jewellery or a watch? Do share!
Are there any particular brands you absolutely love and think I should check out?
Which one is your favourite?
xxxemma