Luxury’s latest watch obsession seems almost wilfully contrary to modern-day living: designs that make it to tell the time. Hidden beneath ancient coins, diamond-set clasps and sculptural pendants, today’s secret watches conceal their dials in plain sight, transforming the simple act of checking the hour into something far more theatrical.
Secret watches enjoyed their golden age during the 1920s and ’30s. The clean geometry of Art Deco’s heyday lent itself perfectly to concealed mechanisms: diamond-set bracelets opened to reveal tiny dials, gem-set clips hid miniature movements and pendant watches disappeared among ropes of pearls. A watch no longer needed to announce itself as a practical instrument, it could masquerade as a jewel.
A$AP Rocky sporting a Bvlgari Monete secret watch on the Cannes red carpet in 2025.
Anne Hathaway, wearing a glittering Bvlgari Serpenti secret watch, on the Breakthrough Prize red carpet in California, in April 2026.
Today’s maisons continue to reinvent the genre. Bvlgari conceals dials within two of its most enduring signatures – the Serpenti and the Monete – behind bejewelled snakes’s heads or ancient Roman coins, respectively. Elizabeth Taylor was the most extravagant fan, wearing a diamond-encrusted Serpenti on the set of , believed to have been a gift from Twentieth Century-Fox, rather than her then-lover Richard Burton. Today’s devotees, from A$AP Rocky to Anne Hathaway, who is rarely seen on the red carpet without a slithering or heirloom-tricked secret watch, might find the designs handy for sneakily checking the time when fulfilling press obligations.
Elsewhere, Van Cleef & Arpels’s Ludo Secret hides its dial beneath a gem-set shutter, while Chanel’s secret watches masquerade as camellias, pincushions and lion medallions. Cartier’s Reflection de Cartier takes a more architectural approach, concealing a miniature watch within a sculptural cuff reflecting its dial back to the wearer. Elsewhere, Rihanna-beloved jewellery label Dyne has just unveiled its first timepiece at Salon Art + Design in New York: a secret watch concealed beneath a diamond lid shaped like a lily bud, inspired by the work of Japanese contemporary artist Mariko Mori.
Secret watches’s origins came with what Brynn Wallner, founder of cult online watch platform Dimepiece, describes as “a dash of sexism”. The story goes that it was once considered uncouth for a woman to openly check the time, lest she imply she had somewhere better to be. A secret watch allowed her to keep track discreetly.
Vintage 1949 Ludo Watch by Van Cleef & Arpels.
© Van Cleef & Arpels SA
Mademoiselle Privé Bouton Lion Ring by Chanel Watches.
For Sotheby’s vice chairman of jewellery, Frank Everett, the appeal is that “the bracelet design comes first. It needs to stand on its own as a jewel, with the timepiece carefully concealed, otherwise there’s no ‘secret’.” His favourites date from the 1940s and ’50s, with “thin bracelets and huge clusters of diamonds covering the watch” – pieces he imagines looking particularly at home “with a martini and cigarette at El Morocco”.
Today, their resurgence has little to do with etiquette. Wallner sees it as a sign of an increasingly adventurous collector. “We’ve reached this point in the post-pandemic watch renaissance when people are now experimenting beyond the basics,” she says. “Once you have the Cartier Panthère and Rolex Datejust, perhaps the next step is a gold Piaget swinging sautoir with a stone dial.” For the more design-led collector, “a secret watch feels like a natural addition.”
Monete watch by Bvlgari.
Bud watch by Dyne.
London design doyenne Alex Eagle agrees that part of the appeal lies in their intimacy. “There’s something so chic and personal about keeping the dial almost just for yourself,” she says, noting that vintage secret watches by Cartier, Hermès and Jaeger-LeCoultre “never seem to hang around for long” in her shop. Secret watch rings, meanwhile, are “having a real moment”, with Piaget’s design from its Shapes of Extraleganza collection a particular favourite of Eagle’s.
With everyday life so public now, a moment of privacy has never looked more precious.