Meet Brynn Wallner, the millennial New Yorker making watches cool again

Brynn Waller is the founder of Dimepiece, a platform about luxury watches. Cobey Arner, Ava Van Osdol

• Brynn Wallner is the millennial founder of Dimepiece, a digital platform covering luxury watches.
• Before starting Dimepiece, Wallner worked on the editorial team at Sotheby’s.
• She told BI that social media is responsible for the rise in young people’s curiosity about watches.

Brynn Wallner is the founder of Dimepiece, a platform that educates people about luxury watches.

In 2019, Wallner got a job on the editorial team at Sotheby’s making content to engage younger people and it wasn’t long before the watches department took notice, she said.

While editing stories, she learned about “heavy hitter watches like the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak or the Patek Philippe Nautilus,” Wallner told Business Insider.

She couldn’t get away from watches and would notice them everywhere. “I just really caught the watch bug,” she said.

Wallner compared watches to works of art. Brynn Wallner

She said the first ever wristwatch was created for a woman by Patek Philippe in the 1800s, and the brand’s website confirms this was for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary.

But when Wallner went on a Google search spree for stories about women wearing watches, the results fell flat. She said she quickly began to realize that women weren’t being equally included in the conversation about watches.

After being laid off the day NYC went into lockdown in March 2020, she began thinking about how she could incorporate this into her next move.

“I was like, women and watches — there’s something there,” she told BI. So she started the Dimepiece Instagram account to “chronicle how women are wearing watches today.”

Wallner brought her flair for making luxury assets at Sotheby’s fun and approachable to her page, which now has more than 48,000 followers.

“I’m gonna be funny, I’m gonna be irreverent, I’m gonna be cute,” she told BI of her approach.

Wallner has seen some major success so far

Her credits include collaborating with Foundwell on a limited curated collection of vintage watches for Dover Street Market and being on the jury for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève — the Oscars for watches.

Wallner told BI that she started the Dimepiece Instagram account around the same time the Black Lives Matter movement gained traction in the summer of 2020.

“You have to consider the social climate. This was not the time to tear down new voices,” she said.

The male-dominant landscape of the watch industry meant women historically had to “assimilate to the existing watch culture,” she added.

When she started Dimepiece, she would talk about Quartz movement watches with the same esteem as a Patek Philippe, which could be seen as a controversial opinion in the world of watches. “But this is what people are wearing,” she said.

Wallner’s first luxury watch purchase

Princess Diana wearing a Cartier Tank Francaise. Tim Graham / Getty Images

Wallner told BI that before starting Dimepiece, she didn’t own a luxury watch and the same can be said for some of her audience.

Her experience of seeing watches on the same playing field as Hockneys and Picassos at Sotheby’s meant she didn’t feel she needed to own a luxury watch to appreciate them.

It was when Wallner began browsing for a watch for her 30th birthday in 2021 that she realized advertising for watches fell short against other areas of fashion.

“They’re sandwiched in between these gorgeous Gucci campaigns. It’s like a bad Photoshop job,” she said.

She eventually chose a Cartier Tank Francaise after learning that Princess Diana and Victoria and David Beckham also wore the watch.

“Cartier is one of the few remaining retailers where you can actually walk into the store and buy it right there,” Wallner said, adding that she made it an experience and a friend came along and documented it for Vogue.

Young people love luxury watches, Wallner says

Wallner credits the rise of young people being interested in watches to “hype culture” as well as accounts like hers that are making watches accessible. “There’s no mystery anymore,” she said.

A Deloitte study of the Swiss Watch Industry in 2022 reported that owning a watch is important to every third millennial and Gen Z. It expects this will be even more important to Gen A who will be exposed to brands from a young age through social media and their millennial parents.

“Even if a 16-year-old can’t afford a Rolex, now they’re gonna start dreaming about it and then eventually buy it when they can afford it,” Wallner added.

The Dimepiece effect

Emma Chamberlain wearing a Cartier Baignoire watch as a choker necklace. Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

Wallner is unofficially responsible for the rise of some underrated vintage watch models, including the Cartier Baignoire, which Emma Chamberlain wore as a choker necklace in October.

When Wallner met Alan Bedwell, antiques dealer and founder of Foundwell, in late 2020 or early 2021, she said he brought along a pouch of watches including the bathtub-inspired Cartier Baignoire, which the brand would later relaunch.

She was shocked no one online was talking about this model at the time and thought it was one of the coolest she’d seen. “I started selling vintage ones — people kept asking me for it,” she added.

While some brands are discontinuing small watch styles, Wallner said they’re also having a big comeback which is forcing watch enthusiasts to look at buying secondhand.

The future of watches according to Wallner

Wallner said aesthetics are changing and the watch industry is taking notice.

The industry has traditionally moved notoriously slowly, but now, with the rise of social media accounts talking watches, there’s constant feedback.

She said people are now opting for a more androgynous look, so brands are reissuing smaller watches like the Cartier Baignoire. Wallner added that people are disregarding gender labels on watches, partly because brands are still “falling short on the design.”

She said it’s promising that brands are releasing watches for the ladies’ collection, as labeling watches as unisex could take the onus off brands focusing on their female clientele.

“It indicates that there was an intention to design for a woman,” Wallner said, though she added brands aren’t always hitting the mark as they try to strike a balance between maintaining their heritage and designing for the people of today.

The tide is turning, even if painfully slowly. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Wallner said.