It's a classic chicken-and-egg question: Did the luxury watch industry create demand for women's watches by delivering ever more elaborately-designed, colored and jeweled pieces, or did women increasingly shopping for their own jewelry fuel the explosion in artfully elegant timepieces?

We may never know, but there's no question demand for women's watches is on the rise, and that luxury watchmakers are outdoing themselves to come up with the most graceful and whimsical creations.

Consider these statistics: Search demand for women's watches rose 7.5% in 2013 from a year earlier, including a whopping 145.5% boost in demand from China, says Digital Luxury Group, which tracks Internet search volumes and publishes the World Watch Report.

Then there's this: Of the more than 400 watches DFS Group buyers "curated" -- yes, purposely selected as if for an art exhibition -- from 40 of its luxury brands for its sixth annual December sale in Macau, 40% were for women, up from nearly zero in the first few years of the sale, says Christophe Chaix, general merchandise manager of DFS's watches, jewelry and accessories business.

Christophe Chaix, general merchandise manager of DFS's watches, jewelry and accessories business.

"The high-end watch business has been a male business for many, many years," Chaix said in the comfort of DFS's sophisticated lounge for top customers at the Four Seasons in Macau, where DFS was presenting its "Masters of Time" collection to its elite clientele.

"For years, female watches were a smaller men's watch," Chaix says. "It could be beautiful, in some cases, it was a very big success, but there was no specific creativity for ladies."

All that began changing within the last three to seven years, depending on the brand, he says.

Women in China, he adds, are quick studies and they are demanding watches with mechanical complications and high-end jewelry. Watchmakers appear eager to comply with timepieces featuring bigger faces, vibrant colors, plenty of diamonds and cutting-edge complications (watch terminology for functions beyond hours and minutes).

Women's haute horlogerie -- high-end watchmaking in layman's terms -- rose 21% last year, the World Watch Report found. Ladies watch sales from the Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin jumped 66.2%, leading the way, the report says. At DFS, Vacheron displayed its Metiers d'Art Florilège Collection, three 37mm-diameter women's watches with round diamond-embezzled white-gold cases surrounding floral designs in rich colors inspired by 18th century botanical illustrations. The watches sell for about 1.1 million Macanese Patacas (about US$137,349).

One of the most extraordinary women's watches for sale by DFS united mechanical wizardry and jeweled elegance. The 42.52mm-diameter Margot watch by Christophe Claret has a 12-petal flower in the center of a mother-of-pearl dial that drops its white-lacquered titanium petals at the press of a button at 2 o'clock. As the button is pressed, French words appear at 4 o'clock to answer the question "Does he love me?" The final answer -- maybe "a little" or "madly" or "not at all" -- is randomly selected. The watch, which won the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève category for ladies high-mechanical watches, sells for about US$220,000.

Then there's Jaquet Droz's Bird Repeater Openwork featuring two painted enamel birds spreading their wings and feeding their young, one of which is in an egg that cracks open, in front of the exposed automated movement of the watch. The limited edition 47mm-diameter timepiece -- only eight were made -- sells for about US$482,000.

Many unique complications in women's watches have "in no way shape or form" ever been seen in a men's watch, says Benjamin Clymer, a watch blogger for a site he founded called Hodinkee. "You are seeing real technical innovation in women's pieces that honestly didn't exist. Really two years ago there was very little true innovation in ladies pieces."

Jean-Claude Biver, president of LVMH Group's watches division, argues that the big Swiss watch brands have been selling half their product to women for years. The real change is with smaller brands, such as Hublot, Panerai and Christophe Claret, Biver said at a media event presenting the DFS collection (DFS is owned by LVMH).

All this makes the point as clear as, well, the time on a watch: There's no question women's luxury timepieces just aren't small men's watches anymore.

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Comments? E--mail us at abby.schultz@barrons.com.

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