Watchmakers Are Catching Up to Cartier’s Small-Case Instincts

October 1, 2026 / Sophie Clearwater /

Austin Butler is often photographed wearing slimmer watch styles. Photo by Emma McIntyre/FilmMagic

For much of the past two decades, luxury watches seemed to move in only one direction: bigger. Cases stretched past 40 millimeters and sports watches grew increasingly imposing as brands built entire identities around watches designed to announce themselves from across the room. Now the pendulum is swinging back. This reversal began in the second half of the 2010s, as vintage watches and their smaller proportions returned to favor, and it accelerated in the early 2020s alongside the resurgence of Cartier and growing interest in shaped, jewelry-like designs. Today the trend appears to be reaching something of a peak, with compact watches showing up at nearly every level of the industry, from tiny, jewel-like pieces to downsized versions of models that not long ago would have been unthinkable below 42 millimeters. Vintage influence and comfort are part of the story, but watches are also increasingly worn as accessories that sit somewhere between timepiece, jewelry and fashion.

Arguably, no brand illustrates the moment better than Cartier, whose shaped cases and jewelry-first designs anticipated much of what the wider market is now embracing. The maison has more than a century of history with compact wristwatches, from the Santos in 1904 to the Baignoire in 1912 and the Tank in 1917, and it never fully joined the later race toward oversized cases. Even the Santos de Cartier, one of the brand’s largest and sportiest core collections, tops out at just 39.8 millimeters across in its standard Large format. Today the Tank, Panthère and Baignoire seem particularly well suited to contemporary tastes, with numerous small and mini models that emphasize the watch’s role as jewelry as much as its ability to tell time.

That approach has coincided with a period of significant growth for the brand. Exact sales figures are hard to pin down in the famously opaque Swiss watch industry, where most companies don’t disclose brand-level revenue or production data. Still, Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult’s ninth annual Swiss Watcher report, published in February 2026, estimates that Cartier generated roughly CHF 3.5 billion in watch sales in 2025, up about 10 percent from the previous year, keeping its position as the world’s second-largest Swiss watch brand behind Rolex.

That momentum shows up in the resale market, too. According to sales data shared with Observer by Watchfinder & Co., a Richemont-owned pre-owned watch specialist, the Cartier Tank Française has been the second-best-selling watch under 30 millimeters on its platform for four consecutive years. Its share of that segment climbed from 5.5 percent in 2022/23 to roughly 8 percent in 2025/26, even as the category’s longtime leader, the Rolex Lady-Datejust, saw its share slip from about a third of sales to just over a quarter. Small watches alone can’t account for that growth, but Cartier’s success comes as the wider market increasingly embraces precisely the kind of shaped, jewelry-influenced designs that have long defined the house.

Cartier is hardly alone at the dressier end of the market. Piaget has revived its taste for highly decorative jewelry watches, while Bulgari continues to position the Serpenti as something that sits almost equally between watch and jewel. Vacheron Constantin and other high-end watchmakers have likewise put greater emphasis on smaller, shaped and gem-set pieces. The result is a landscape in which a tiny case can read as deliberate and fashionable rather than simply feminine.

A large-model Cartier Santos wristwatch with a green dial, Roman numerals, stainless-steel case and bracelet and visible bezel screws against a pale background. — The Santos de Cartier tops out in its standard large format at just 39.8 millimeters. Courtesy Cartier

Perhaps more telling, though, is what’s happening at brands historically associated with the opposite extreme. IWC once marketed its watches under the slogan “Engineered for Men,” part of an overtly masculine identity built around substantial Pilot’s Watches and sports models. Today its Ingenieur—relaunched in modern form at 40 millimeters—is also available as the 35-millimeter Ingenieur Automatic, a size that a generation ago would routinely have been classified as a women’s watch. The brand expanded the 35-millimeter family again this year, making clear that the smaller format is no one-off experiment.

Breitling offers another clear reversal. Long associated with oversized aviation watches, the brand introduced the 38-millimeter Top Time B31 in 2025, fronted by Austin Butler, as one of its smallest current men’s watches. Its catalog now also includes the Chronomat Automatic 36, a size once commonly reserved for women, which sits in the same lineup as the brand’s largest sports models.

Then there’s Panerai, one of the brands most responsible for making very large watches fashionable in the first place. Its signature Luminor became famous for cases measuring 44 millimeters and up. Today the Luminor Quaranta brings the design down to 40 millimeters, while the slimmer Luminor Due has been offered at just 38 millimeters. Even at Panerai, “smaller” has entered the vocabulary.

The 38 millimeters Panerai Luminor Due TuttoOro.

The pattern shows up in Watchfinder’s case-size data as well. Across the reported size bands between 10 and 30 millimeters, unit sales on its platform grew between 26 and 70 percent year over year in the 12 months to July 2026, compared with just 5.5 percent growth for watches in the 40-45 millimeter range and 17 percent growth for the platform overall.

The shift extends well below the top of the luxury market. Frederique Constant has leaned into the same jewelry-watch aesthetic with the Classics Manchette, a 25.7-by-20-millimeter cuff-style watch that sets a tiny square dial within an integrated bracelet, alongside the more traditional 36-by-25-millimeter Classics Carrée.

Tissot, meanwhile, has its enormously successful PRX in 35-millimeter quartz and automatic versions, with the quartz model starting at $450. Citizen has followed a similar path with a 37-millimeter version of its popular Tsuyosa automatic, introduced in 2025 as the collection’s first compact execution. Hamilton likewise has a 36-millimeter version of its rugged Khaki Field, underscoring how widely smaller proportions have spread across the accessible end of the market.

There isn’t a single reason watches are shrinking. Vintage collecting has made the proportions of older watches familiar again. Smaller cases are often more comfortable. And the old assumption that a serious men’s watch has to be large has weakened considerably. At the same time, watches have become more closely tied to fashion, where proportion and styling can matter as much as mechanics, if not more. A small Cartier worn loosely like a bracelet or a compact sports watch peeking out from beneath a sleeve can feel less like equipment and more like part of an outfit.

The oversized watch hasn’t disappeared, nor is it likely to. But after years in which bigger was treated almost automatically as better, a smaller watch once again feels like a choice rather than a compromise. A watch, it turns out, doesn’t need to take up much wrist space to make an impression.