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Is it a Watch? Is it Jewellery? Does it Tell the Time? … Does it Matter?

December 2005


It’s that time of the year again! The sighting of the first Santa Claus has been made in some back alley in the city (near the school for aspi-ring Santas), the overpowering perfume of the blooming flowers sends people diving for a tissue to staunch the hay fever or perhaps it’s because the trains still don’t run on time but anyway fewer people complain. Either which way Spring is here, holidays are starting to exercise the mind (and the hip pocket) and Christmas is around the next corner but one. It is the time of the year when a young man’s mind turns to more love and a young woman’s to love, watches, jewellery and shorter summery skirts.
Women have more expansive minds than men. Regardless of concentrating on the one particular focus, watches and jewellery are always waiting in turn, together with clothes, parties and pleasant balmy evenings with friends or strolling on the white sandy Sydney beaches.
The winter clothing sales are behind us and the Spring and Summer fashions are on full display in all the shops.


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When I was a kid the men bought watches and jewellery for the women, but today women buy their own with much better sense of outlay and occasion and with a much higher proportion of the personal discretionary income with which to do this.
Of course men do still buy watches as gifts for their favourite and loved women but this is a different category of celebration. And here is a good time to reflect that the watches women buy for themselves and those men buy for women are completely different and with a different rationale!
The Sydney shops are full of these beautiful things with the added benefit of the fashion watch and jewellery sales offering 50% across the city.
Tiffany in Sydney has a gorgeous shop at the exclusive end of Castlereagh Street and a stroll through the luxury watches and jewellery on display hints at the resurgence of yellow gold. Harking to the vintage heritage styles of the 1930s is the Tiffany Grand and it shows an ageless charm and comes not just in white gold but 18 carat yellow or rose gold.
With a splash of lovely Spring colours, Cartier has its Delices de Cartier range of jewellery and they too have yellow gold showing in their displays. It’s hard to say that there is a change to Spring fashions in watches at this end of the money-scale but Cartier does provide brighter coloured straps for their fashionable watches where a new outfit requires matching shades. Cartier Sydney reports that white gold and platinum used to be 75%-80% of sales but this is now heading towards 50/50 with yellow gold.
Levendi Jewellers with their strong Greek heritage are showing some sumptuous yellow gold jewellery for the ladies who have it and know how to flaunt heavy metal!
Strolling now, down through the city into the Strand Arcade where Fredman’s classy new and used collector’s watches are to be found, particularly oversize pieces for men and women. But these don’t make fashion so much as reflect favourably on it!
Across George Street and we come to the Queen Victoria Building. Here are the funky and glitzy here-and-now watches right next to the Town Hall underground where passing trade is huge and the tourists come with receptive minds and exhausted credit cards.
Right down the other end of town out towards Sydney University is the Broadway Centre with its shops catering from luxury to lingerie, fashion to food and wallets to watches. This is where the burbs [suburbs for the uninitiated] meets the city and the true barometer of the people is found.
Here, Goldmark Jewellers are giving away 50% on their colourful watches to kick-start the Christmas race to the line and are offering cuff and scarf straps with matching dials.
Similarly Crown Jewellery are giving 40% and John Ma, Manager, explains that “Business is always slow in the May – September months and now the wedding season and the warm Spring months are here it will be good business through to Christmas.”
John Ma also commented that bright colours and straps displayed in the window bring the customers into the shop but more often they buy something else!
So that is the Spring fashion in Sydney and the days get warmer, longer and more languid. The Spring sales launch the season and a young man’s mind turns to love and a young woman’s to more love, watches, jewellery and shorter Summery skirts.
It was always thus.


Source: October - November 2005 Issue

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