This post is part of a series, Reading Time at HSNY, written by our librarians. Today’s post was written by our Spring 2026 intern, Edna Otuomagie.

For decades, watches and bag pairings have signaled luxury, style, and elegance. But, how about attaching these two accessories together? Your first thought might be a keychain watch as a bag charm…but I’m thinking about something else entirely…

I introduce to you: the chatelaine (image 1) — a waist-hung piece of jewelry that originally operated as a noblewoman’s purse that also carried a watch. During my time as a library intern at the Horological Society of New York (HSNY), I developed a fascination with these interesting pieces due to their beautifully ornate construction and their place within women’s jewelry history.

As I learned from reading a copy of How the Watch Was Worn: A Fashion for 500 Years by Genevieve Cummins, wearing watches at the waist with a chain may have started sometime in the 17th century, but they were not always used as purses. By the 18th century, though, watches and their chains were a popular fad. Enter the chatelaine, which itself emerged around 1707, though it did not get its present name until 1828. The chatelaine is a form of jewelry that was historically worn by upper-class women and featured multiple chains carrying watches, keys, and a variety of other tools and trinkets (known as breloques). These historical types of handbags served the same purposes that modern ones do — holding stuff and showing off.

Cummins writes that women of this era were insistent on wearing their incredibly elaborate watches and accessories on view. This may be because they wanted to present themselves as high-class ladies who were the mistresses of their own château — hence the name “chatelaine” which in French means “lady of the castle”. This was especially driven home by the presence of a gold key attached to the piece, which further emphasized a woman’s powerful social position. Even the men partook in this public showing-off. They took classes in Paris to learn how to make the most noise they could with their watch trinkets and chains while walking (even though the watch itself was hidden in a fob pocket).

However, this ostentatious accessorizing wasn’t without risk. Pickpockets were keen on snatching valuable jewelry and watches from unsuspecting passersby. This may have influenced people (particularly in the 1770s and 1780s) to start wearing two watches, with one of them being a fausse montre (a French term meaning “false watch”). Also known as watch-form items, these are objects that were meant to look like watches but actually were not — like the ones featured in image 2 from How the Watch Was Worn.

These are not to be confused with “form watches” (known in French as “montres de fantaisie” meaning “fantasy watches”) which are items that do not look like watches but actually are. A great example of these types of watches is image 3 from Watches of Fantasy, which depicts the front and back of a chatelaine in the form of a lyre. You can read more about form watches in this article from HSNY librarian Miranda Marraccini.

The historical categorization of chatelaines is based on their attachment mechanism, the first of which is known as the equipage. Cummins explains that the equipage was a device hung from the waist that was secured to the waistband by a large flat piece. This piece in turn attached to multiple decorative plaques that carried the accessory pieces. There were originally two types of equipages: one for various breloques and another for just the watch (image 4). Image 5 shows two equipages, one of each type, worn over an 18th century pannier gown.

As artistic movements and fashion trends changed over time, so did the design structure of chatelaines. The two types of equipages began to merge and evolve into one, with a variety of new mechanisms for fastening to one’s clothes. Some of these newer varieties included more asymmetrical forms and styles in the mid-18th century (image 6).

Towards the end of the 18th century, another style of chatelaine that emerged no longer included the complex equipages but instead was hookless and draped over the waistband. This new style is known as the Macaroni chatelaine (image 7), and is named for the Macaroni Club — a British subculture that was the precursor to the dandy and featured young worldly men who put a lot of effort into their appearance and dressing well in highly elaborate androgynous clothing styles. This luxurious chatelaine style continued well into the 19th century.

The structure and purposes of chatelaines continued to evolve throughout the 19th century in conjunction with changes in fashion and watch construction, possibly influenced by new developments in culture and technology (i.e. photography). One example of these new varieties of chatelaines was The Norwegian Belt (image 8) — a women’s utility belt that was popular among royalty and high society. The belt had multiple accessories that could be easily switched out based on one’s personal activities.

In the late 19th century, when women began to partake in organized sports and athletic activities, their chatelaines gained thematic elements to match their new physical endeavors and athletic interests. For example, these sports-themed chatelaines featuring dog head medallions can be viewed in image 9. While perusing online, I also found a vintage horse racing steeplechase-themed chatelaine on eBay and a basketball-themed modern chatelaine — known as a knitter’s chatelaine — on Etsy.

By the end of the Victorian era, chatelaines became less popular and less elaborate, slowly being replaced with the rising popularity of the brooch watch (like the one in the shape of a handbag in image 10). These earlier brooch watches were also worn at the waist in the chatelaine style.

Another watch style born from this chatelaine-to-brooch watch transition era that continues to be popular today is what Cummins calls the belt watch or the belt pocket watch (e.g., the assortment found in image 11). These types of watches that come in a variety of forms are also called by an array of names including: keyring/keychain watches, clip/carabiner watches (like the Cartier one in image 12), bag/bag charm watches, and more.

The keyring and keychain watches have a pretty extensive history, particularly a subtype within motorsports known as the tire watch. The tire watch of watch includes the movement, dial, and watch cover embedded inside a miniature rubber tire. The popularity of tire watches dates at least as far back as the 1930s with the Marvin Montre Pneu (or “Tire Watch” in French) by René Didisheim (If you’re interested, read more in this article on the tire watch.)

The popularity of these keyring watches exploded in the 1950s and 1960s with the emergence of the golden age of motoring, where almost 50 brands were making their own version of the tire watch. The purpose was to have a special thematic watch attached to your car keys that signaled your love of motoring.

While the mid-20th century saw men especially embracing the tire watch in large numbers, this same time period saw women making callbacks to the utility of the chatelaine — but with a modern twist. After WWII, some women working blue-collar jobs began to utilize carabiners not just as handbags to hold their keys and other necessities but also as signals of their sexuality to fellow members of the queer community. Where the key in the chatelaine originally signaled a woman’s status as the mistress of her house who did no manual labor, the keys of a carabiner signaled a queer woman’s sexual identity and ability to make her own money through manual labor.

In recent years, carabiners as well as bag watches — particularly carabiners and watches that act as handbag charms — have been popular across diverse groups of women. In an article in CR Fashion Book, Sofia Ante writes that the use of charms as accessories (i.e., charm bracelets) dates back to the Neolithic period while many cultural communities across the world used charms as amulets for protection and good fortune (e.g., Japanese omamori and African mojo bags). As Ante also writes, it may have been during the Roman Empire when charms started being worn as individual signifiers of personal identity.

Fast forward to the 1980s, when the most coveted luxury handbag — the Birkin — would be created. This handbag was designed for famed actress Jane Birkin who many credit with popularizing the trend of handbag charms within modern mainstream Western society. It was around this same time that kawaii bag charms exploded in popularity in Japan. “Kawaii,” which is the Japanese word for “cute” or “adorable,” is a term that refers to a global cultural movement, style, and community that features predominantly women and girls who wear bright colors and merchandise of their favorite characters (e.g., Hello Kitty, Hatsune Miku, or characters from other media franchises) as a form of personal creative expression.

This fanciful show of individual style has not slowed down but rather accelerated in recent years, possibly in response to the increasing homogenization and beige-ification of products across industries (e.g. technology, fashion, etc.) where depersonalization has, in many ways, become the norm. Whether it be Hello Kitty or Labubu, people (many of them women) will continue to clip their charms to their handbags (and even their waists) to express their personal creativity and sense of whimsy.

This vibrant personal creative expression with handbags and charms is being recognized by the likes of Audemars Piguet and Swatch who have recently collaborated on a new watch collection, the Royal Pop (you might have heard of it). As an ode to both AP’s 1980s Royal Oak pocket watch line and Swatch’s vintage POP series, Royal Pop combines historical prestige with contemporary popular culture. And what better way to do that than to act as a bag charm—one of the latest popular fashion trends that continues the legacy of the historic chatelaine.

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