I see plenty of kickstarter articles flash across my Facebook newsfeed with claims this start-up watch company is disrupting the $19 billion dollar luxury watch industry – what absolute bullshit.

Firstly, we need to define what is a luxury watch and what is a fashion watch. Let’s start with the fashion watch brand, the most notable trait is these watches are produced by the major fashion houses to round out their fashion accessory business with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors and Daniel Wellington. There is nothing uniquely wrong with a fashion watch, many people revere and follow fashion trends, these timepieces are matched to current fashion trends with the fashion watch emergence in the 1980s.

Following on from the quartz revolution of the 1970s, the fashion watch era lead by Fossil, Guess and Swatch were less about the technical capabilities and more about ascetics. The branding was not about accuracy or innovation but original designs – some would argue outrageous design. I would argue that fashion watches are now less about original design as they tend to shamelessly rip-off the designs of luxury brands. The trend is now towards the watch wardrobe; that is matching the watch to the wardrobe with multiple watches required for casual or formal wear.

These tend to be relatively cheap in comparison to the luxury watch market as not too many people can afford a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar for formal wear, a Rolex Explorer as a sports watch, an Omega Planet Ocean as their dive watch and a TAG Heuer Carrera for their motorsport activities. The fashion watch has again transformed with mechanical movements from ETA and Sellita now available to power the fashion watch brands complete with display casebacks and skeletonised dials.

The NATO strap appears to be de rigueur for not only some luxury brands but fashion brands as well with many trends taken from the luxury watch segment. No longer are fashion watches purely quartz movements although interestingly plenty of luxury watches are frequently powered by quartz movements.

A luxury watch brand will generally have serious heritage involved along with technical innovation. A brand such as TAG Heuer, founded in 1860, has been described by some as a fashion brand is incorrect even though TAG Heuer is now part of LVHM (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) along with Bvlgari (1884), Zenith (1885) and Chaumet (1780).

As a technical innovation, in 1916 Heuer designed and manufactured the Mikrograph, a chronograph capable of measuring time with a precision of 1/100th of a second. A Heuer stopwatch worn on the wrist of Astronaut John Glenn onboard Mercury spacecraft Frienship 7 in 1962 was the first Swiss timepiece in space.

The TAG Heuer Monaco and Carrera ensures the TAG Heuer brand will forever remain aligned to the luxury watch segment through their motor racing involvement. Despite manufacturing quartz powered timepieces such as the entry-level Formula 1 series. The Aquaracer is the mainstay of their professional dive watch collection rated to 300 metres.

There is the holy trinity of haute horology that includes the prestige brands of Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. These really are the top end of watchmaking – I certainly appreciate their style. Just missing out on the group is Breguet, not because of any lack of technical innovation or style but because they were originally a Paris based French business before relocating to Le Locle in 1793 during a period of exile. This was due to Abraham-Louis Breguet being apparently in line for the guillotine during the French Revolution.