Introducing
@ticktockbelles
The world of women in horology is expanding, surely but slowly. Akin to building a house one brick at-a-time, assembling a watch movement one tiny part after another tiniest part, or having men in power recognize, at last, that women are also humans and therefore entitled to the exact same rights and respect as men have for thousands of years. And history could have shown, if women had been permitted to write it, that the world would be in a better place should it have been in the hands of women. And this is not to say that women were never part of the horological world—because who do you think assembles your watches and regulates the movements?—but it is to say that it’s about darn good time for them to occupy their rightful place in it.
In the latest installment in Women in Horology, we learned about Sanna a.k.a. @windsmeup on Instagram who is the first woman we’ve written about to be holding a position of importance in the watch industry. She’s been working as a Watch Specialist for a prominent Swedish auction house for over a decade which is something you don’t often hear in our niche world. And today we’re going to take a look at two women who, although they don’t work in the watch industry in the same way as Sanna does, play an equally important role in bringing women into the hobby. Because Sanna, by posting on her Instagram and running women-only auctions, helps in bringing more women into the hobby just like today’s protagonists do.
So who is this profile story about? We’re turning the spotlight to Deb and Steph a.k.a. @TickTockBelles on Instagram who have been co-running a popular and unique IG account as well as organizing watch related events in their community working hand-in-hand with popular brands. As always, I feel honored to be able to relate stories about women who love watches and who play an integral part in our community, though ideally I shouldn’t have to. But until things take a more natural course, I want to thank Deb and Steph for their generosity, patience (I am two months behind in getting this article published) and their camaraderie.
Left: Steph Soh; Right: Deb Wong
Men Had Something to Do With It
Thanks to the new generations of women watch collectors, one day I will be able to write an article that reads “She was introduced to horology by her mother who’s a popular content creator and advocate known the world over.” But things being as they are, we do need to begin Deb and Steph’s story where it actually started and in a realistic context. If you’ve read the story we wrote on Xi a.k.a. @itselevenxi (LINK) then you might be familiar with the concept of young women and men being given commemorative coming-of-age watches. Something we will come back to in a little bit. The first watch Deb remembers owning was one she won at a raffle when she was 15. What was the raffle? She doesn’t remember. But she does remember the feeling of receiving the parcel which contained her new watch from a brand called Smash. (Deb described the latter as being the equivalent of Swatch in Asia.)
Deb also clearly remembers the way this watch looked at it had an uncommon color combination: bright purple and banana yellow. Which would mean Smash was ahead of today’s trends of making colorful watches—you know, the recent collaboration Tag HEUER made with Kith? Anyway, the Smash held a special place for Deb as it was the first time she ever won something and so to the memory of having had the watch is attached that of having won a prize. A few years later, and here comes the justification for this part’s title, she received a Swatch chronograph from her dad which he bought her during a business trip to Switzerland. To my great surprise, the Swatch ticked for 30 years (making it Deb’s first major timekeeping device) until it stopped doing so a couple of years back. Deb was so heartbroken that she asked her husband to discard the watch—it was too painful for her to see the watch not working and being unrepairable.
Steph also started her watch journey at a young age. At age five, her dad gifted her a Mickey Mouse watch which she still has today! X number of years later (since it would have been impolite for me to ask how old she is) the watch still sits in her collection although she—naturally perhaps—no longer wears it. Despite how long ago Steph received the Mickey Mouse timekeeping device, and given that it is perhaps not her style of watch anymore, she nevertheless cherishes it. Some years later, at around age 12, Steph did so well in school that she received a new watch from her family. And at university, Steph bought a few Swatches which were, perhaps surprisingly to us in 2024, not that cheap compared to other watches. Deb did mention that many of her childhood friends who came from wealthier families had Swatches while she couldn’t afford one. (That should put things in perspective for you.)
From Watch-Curious to Watch Collectors
Deb and Steph have an unusual beginning story, and we must go back ten years in the past (2014) to understand when and how they met. As they put it, before becoming partners on Instagram creating content about watches, Deb and Steph were “handbag friends.” They were both into handbags and one day Steph was selling a hard-to-find lock from Hermes on a local website which Deb was looking for. They met, talked about handbags, and as their friendship developed their conversations jumped to other subjects like profession and family. Steph was curious to know who Deb would pass on her handbag collection to since she has a son. So the former suggested to the latter that perhaps she could build a watch collection as a legacy for her son. You should know that at the time, Deb did have watches but wasn’t a collector. That was Steph.
Indeed, Steph began buying nice watches when she started working and spent her first bonus on a Rolex Datejust. (Which she no longer has.) The Rolex was too small for Steph and since the global trend for sport watches was, already, to wear bigger timepieces, she decided to trade it for indeed a larger Rolex. For many years then before they met, Steph was an avid watch collector and she was even addicted to them. (Her words, not mine.) She took a break for a few years until the COVID-19 pandemic put the whole world on pause. Since she wasn’t going out she didn’t have a use for handbags, but she did find pleasure wearing her watches again and that’s how the addiction was revived. Through Steph, Deb started learning about watches, which ones could make for good collection pieces, movements, designs, and her collection simply blew up.
Upon my asking how many watches she has in her collection, Deb only said “it’s in the double digits.”Um.
Circling back to two earlier points—that Steph suggested that watches were better gifts to pass down than handbags and that children in many Asian cultures receive watches as coming-of-age gifts—Steph’s two daughters received nice watches when they turned 18 and 21. At 18 because it is the year teenage girls and boys take an important exam that will dictate which university they go to. At 21because it symbolizes stepping into adulthood. (Both Deb and I expressed our deep desire to be adopted by Steph!) Furthermore and as mentioned earlier, Steph was the one who suggested to Deb to look into gifting watches to her future daughter-in-law as heirlooms. The latter is a beautiful tradition which I’ve encountered in many cultures as can be seen in multiple articles I’ve written on women in horology, brand owners, and content creators.
Steph, please do adopt me.
@TickTockBelles and What It Means to the Watch Community
Before becoming outspoken advocates of the female voice in the watch industry through their Instagram account, Deb and Steph got started posting photos of their respective watches on their respective IG accounts. Steph, for example, was proud of the fact that she wears her Rolex’es on actual diving trips and on adventures, something that most men who own Rolex’es don’t even do. For her part, Deb would post pictures of her watches paired with outfits and accessories. Both would showcase a majority of their personal watch collections and overtime, they started receiving messages on Instagram from other women who were also into the hobby, as well as their in-real-life friends, who would be asking questions about watches. Through these experiences they realized there was a gap in the watch community with a serious underrepresentation of female watch collectors.
The pivotal moment for the two friends was when Steph was invited to speak at a panel on women in horology at a watch trade show in Singapore. There were three women invited, all three being local collectors. This was a special moment as it was the first time women were invited to speak (before it was only men) which showed that things were shifting ever so slightly. But as they explained, it wasn’t until Steph and Deb created @TickTockBelles and put themselves out there that brands and boutiques realized that, indeed, women were into watches and that successful women like them constituted a solid clientele they should cater to. (We will talk about Deb’s and Steph’s profession a little later.) Before that, women were not taken seriously by the boutiques, nor were the composition and nature of their personal collections.
So not only did Steph and Deb manage to put the spotlight on female watch collectors in terms of how they are perceived by brands and retailers, but they also positively influenced women collectors to partake in events, make their voice heard, and eventually become influencers themselves. However, the two friends do not find contentment just bringing in more women into the hobby—which is, as we know, a crucial and difficult thing to do—but they also justifiably pride themselves in changing men’s perspectives on the concept of women in horology. Indeed, their message is spreading so far and wide that now men go to Steph and Deb to share their enthusiasm for their work and bring along their wives, girlfriends, and daughters to join the growing community.
The Community and What Drives Deb & Steph
As you have most likely noticed, the watch community is an international community. And Deb and Steph operate in two realms of our beautiful niche world. First locally through a core group of friends they’ve brought together, and second thanks to the borderless nature of Instagram. When they first got started, their local community had five members (excluding Deb and Steph) and now, a few years later, there are between 30 to 40 people who regularly attend the events they put together. (Deb and Steph bring their friends to launch events organized in partnerships with brands, mostly Swiss luxury ones.) Second, online, they are able to connect with people from every corner of the planet which bring them, whenever and wherever they travel, to reach out to local collectors to organize meet-ups.That is something they couldn’t do before and which shows that not only the general watch community is growing, but also that women’s place in it is finally getting recognized.
I asked them what I would consider being a quintessential male question: is @TickTockBelles a club for which members pay dues? Of course not. Being a club and paying dues would be the categorical opposite of what Deb and Steph strive to accomplish here: to make horology accessible to all and first, to women. This means removing any barriers that would prevent anyone from joining the @TickTockBelles community and from attending events. Deb and Steph want for their community to remain as open as possible for anyone who has an horological inclination. And they successfully do so, for example, through the events they organize with brands. These events consist of previews for future collections which members of the @TickTockBelles community can see in advance of the general public. The duo has been so successful in bridging the gap between brands and male and female collectors that the demand for them to do these events outpace their capacity of organizing them.
The Core Mission of @TickTockBelles
Although we’ve already touched upon the raison d’être of @TickTockBelles and what motivates Deb and Steph to do what they do, it’s worth saying it again. In the past few years, the two friends managed to bring awareness to women who collect watches so that men would, at last, recognize that they are an integral part of the watch community. They as individuals and women as a whole. As we know, their adventure started when Steph was invited to speak at a panel on women in horology and now they organize meet-ups and launch parties in Singapore. Their community is growing beyond Singapore through international watch events and the virtual community they are building via Instagram. Now they are in a position in which they meet other female watch groups from other countries with which they can exchange on their experience and, naturally, their common love for horology. But there’s more to it.
The power of @TickTockBelles is that of creating a safe space for women in which they can safely come out as being watch enthusiasts and collectors and to express themselves through photography on Instagram. That and through in-person events and individual connections they make when traveling for work and with their families, they slowly expand their reach to bring in more women. This also means that through them and through their community, women can expand their own knowledge base on horology. From collecting Swiss luxury watches they get to know independent and microbrands they didn’t know about before, or perhaps didn’t feel comfortable talking about. For example, Deb posts about Mr. Jones watches often, which prompted a local follower in Singapore during a visit to London, to visit the brand’s boutique and purchase one of their watches. That is something that would have never happened if it were not for Deb and Steph’s outstanding work.
As you might have realized by now, during these interviews I like to ask a job-interview-like question: where do you see yourself five years from now? The two friends do not know where they will be five years from now but they do have plans for the next couple of years. Their plan is to continue growing their community and to do so outside of Singapore. They are already hard at work on this as they’ve established connections with fellow female watch collectors in other countries and major cities. The benefit of doing so is to introduce overseas collectors to the vibrant Singapore watch collecting community, not to necessarily increase the ranks of @TickTockBelles, but instead to spread their message of welcomeness and openness to the greatest number of women collectors around the world. And why not one day to work with a brand to develop their own watches in their own image.
Life Outside of @TickTockBelles: An Exercise in Multitasking
Whenever I meet fellow watch collectors I like to know what they do for a living. And this question is much more relevant when looking at female watch enthusiasts and collectors because, of course, they tend to be the ones taking care of the kids and the home. (Duh, I mean, this is only 2024 folks!) As such, both Deb and Steph are working professionals in addition to being mothers and wives. Deb works sales in the IT industry and Steph is an educator. Being a male with no kids and working for myself I already encounter many issues just balancing what is a simple life, so I was blown away to learn that Deb and Steph are indeed working professionals, mothers, wives, friends, in addition to running a popular and successful Instagram account as well as setting up events with luxury brands. They get so busy sometimes that they must take turns.
Conclusion: Being a Female Watch Collector in Singapore
These profile stories on female watch collectors have two goals. First, to bring awareness to their experience of being women who like watches and who walk into a men’s world. Second, to talk about the incredible work the protagonists of these series do to not only breakdown the barriers which keep women from coming out as being collectors, but to also create a safe space for them to express their passion for the hobby and to meet other fellow female watch nerds and to, in some cases, change their career path and life to fully delve into their love for watches. So I do ask each interviewee about their experience being women in horology. More often than not what they share isn’t pretty but not surprising.
For Deb and Steph, things are mostly good as in Singapore, in their experience, there is no real stigma associated with being a female watch collector. Before creating @TickTockBelles, Steph was seen as being her husband’s plus one at watch events and in boutiques. They were not recognized as being collectors and as having tremendous buying power, as it seems to be the case with most women in their country. Unlike women in Europe or the United States, whom I’ve written about before, Deb and Steph were not denigrated or talked down to, just ignored. (We Westerners should not be proud of ourselves here.) So I for one look forward to seeing where @TickTockBelles goes in one or two years from now.
I highly recommend checking out their Instagram account to know more about Deb and Steph and the tremendous work they do for all female watch enthusiasts, collectors, and content creators around the world.
Thanks for reading.