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A watch from the Swarovski Baguette Amethyst collection

Designer watches

Fashion watches are giving luxury watches a run for their money

Serious watch collectors might sniff at the notion of fashion watches. But today, the mighty fashion watch is giving the luxury watch market a run for its money.

Top fashion brands - Guess, Fossil, Burberry, Timex, DKNY, Nina Ricci and Marc Jacobs to name a few, are using high quality materials in collections that, unlike their luxury counterparts, are renewed at least twice, sometimes four times a year.

The boom in fashion watches can be traced back to the late 1970s, when the mainly Swiss makers of mechanical watches were hit hard by the invention and promotion - mainly by the Japanese - of quartz watch movements. In the early 1980s, the Swiss rejoined the party with a blast when Swatch created the "fashion watch." It was a cheap, plastic, accurate and, above all, trendy alternative to the mechanical watch, and it spawned a brand new segment in the watch industry.

Other "fashion" watches followed, many of them falling into the category of "disposable" and aimed at the mass market of the 1980s. Today, however, the words "cheap" and "disposable" could never be used to describe a genre that has evolved to encompass some of the most design-forward, high-quality watches on the market.

Trends include patent leathers, etched and colored metals, charms, enamel, diamonds or Swarovski crystals, colored Swarovski crystals, synthetic gemstones, and black-and-white palette combinations, including black crystals.

Many are priced well under $1,000, prompting women to realize that building a wardrobe of watches is as important as having several pairs of shoes.