Clocking Couture: Bulova’s Forgotten Collaboration with Dior

Remember when brand collaborations were drop-everything appointment shopping? The right pairings delivered seductive, out-of-left-field products that would generate an immediate dopamine rush and lasting bragging rights.

Sadly, all too often these days, brands enter into these collaborations not to put an exciting new twist on one of their products but to use them as a predictable method to gin up attention with minimal effort or creativity. The formula is simple: Take a familiar product from Brand A + Stamp it with a logo from Brand B = Clicks and likes.
 

However, during a recent visit to Bulova headquarters, amid the brand’s archive of more than 3,000 items and 6,000 digital entries, I saw traces of an old-school collaboration with Dior that drew in equal parts from the technical resources of the New York-based American watch brand and the creative vision of a counterpart from the loftiest tier of French fashion.

Amazingly, Bulova’s nearly decade-long collaboration with Christian Dior has flown under the radar of virtually everyone, save exceptionally intrepid eBay shoppers, but it is a collaboration worthy of the “drop-everything” designation.

Launched as a pilot collection during the 1968 holiday season, the original Christian Dior Collection by Bulova consisted of nine watches, each with a dial featuring both brands front and center.

More importantly, this collection of manual-wind 14-karat gold watches ranged from $165 to $550, which means that even the most expensive of these models were more accessibly priced than one of the fashion house’s dresses and thus served as an entry point into the rarefied world of Dior for a fraction of the cost. Unsurprisingly, the watches sold out almost immediately.

(Fun Fact: Adjusted for inflation, the original Christian Dior Collection by Bulova models would range in price from approximately $1,447 to $4,822 in 2023.)
 

Then, the following year, the collection doubled to 20 models thanks to a “100 percent sales increase over last year,” according to a 1969 Women’s Wear Daily article quoting then-vice president and national sales manager Michael D. Roman.

Of course, the prestige didn’t flow just one way. As Bulova’s in-house historian Carl Rosen explained, each brand brought value to the other: “Bulova had the technical expertise with the movements and the distribution into the retail channels that Dior wouldn’t have been able to crack into.”
 

Meanwhile, Dior “gave a whole fashion approach to the watches; these aren’t like any other Bulova watches that existed beforehand – they were very uniquely Dior and very different.” The French label’s imprint even extended even to the watch packaging, which bore its signature gray color and both brand’s logos.
 

Though “Dior drove the design process” of the collaboration, according to Rosen, Bulova was no stranger to creating highly decorative designs. In fact, the company began its life in 1875 as a jewelry boutique in downtown Manhattan, only entering the business of manufacturing clocks and pocket watches – first in New York City and Providence and later in Bienne, Switzerland – in 1911. The intervening decades saw its rise to prominence through innovations like introducing the world’s first full collection of jeweled women’s watches.

Moreover, the 1970s stand out as a signal decade for the brand, marking the launch of many of its most sought-after icons, like the bullhead-style “Parking Meter” chronograph (1973) and the Devil Diver, which achieved its diabolical nickname for achieving water-resistance of 666 feet.
 

Of course, those standout releases targeted male consumers. The Bulova-Dior partnership “helped balance things out with a focus on the ladies,” said Rosen. And while watch options for men were also available in the Christian Dior Collection by Bulova, they were in shorter supply. Fun Fact: These watches were included in the collection because the fashion house introduced its first ready-to-wear collection for gents in 1970.