In the words of the inimitable James Brown: ‘This is a man’s world… but it would be nothing, nothing, without a woman or a girl.’ It’s hard to imagine “the godfather of soul’s” signature tune being adopted by a company as traditional as Patek Philippe – but if there’s a Swiss watch brand that has gone out of its way to recognise the fact that women might want more from a watch, it has to be Patek.

Right from its founding in 1839, the company has catered for female tastes. In 1851, it attracted royal approval when the innovative keyless winding watch that debuted at the Great Exhibition in London was presented to Queen Victoria. A remarkable blue enamel and diamond-encrusted model decorated with gem bouquets and signed on the dial, case and movement – which also carried the words “Invention brevetée”, denoting the fact that it used Adrien Philippe’s keyless winding, patented in 1845.

She was sufficiently impressed by the watch to make Patek Philippe royal watchmaker – and could there be better PR than having the ruler of 450 million people on your books? That original watch and another of Victoria’s are now prized treasures of Patek’s Geneva museum and consistently among the most popular items when shown at the company’s international travelling exhibitions.

Patek Philippe led the way in engraving, gem setting and enamelling, establishing the exceptional reputation for decoration that it maintains today. But when it comes to making innovative women’s watches, the most significant moment in Patek’s timeline must surely have been in 1868 when it produced the very first Swiss-made wrist watch for a Hungarian client called Countess Koscowicz.

It chose a woman’s model in which to debut its first chiming wristwatch, a five-minute repeater. Unveiled in 1916 and sold to a wealthy New Yorker, it featured an integrated platinum bracelet. Patek’s female-orientated time-telling jewels remained largely the domain of socialites, nobles and royals, including our own Queen Elizabeth. In 1999, however, the brand upped the women’s watch ante with the launch of a model designed to introduce itself to a younger, more care-free audience.

The Twenty-4, while far from Patek’s first foray into women’s watchmaking, still represented the first entire collection to have been created solely for female buyers. Available first in diamond-set stainless steel followed by rose gold, it proved to be a smash-hit – even though the watches were launched only with a quartz movement.

The Twenty-4 piqued the interest of a whole new sector of female buyers, thus enabling them to become “educated” about the dial name’s prestigious history and so forming a whole new body of collectors.

And while the received wisdom has held that men are generally more drawn to mechanical objects than women, there are clearly many female horophiles on whom the wonders of clockwork are not wasted. Proof of that lies in the fact that Patek’s Twenty-4 models – available in both rectangular and round designs since 2018 – have proved hugely popular in automatic form and, more tellingly, that the brand’s more complicated mechanical watches have become highly prized.

Patek first dipped a toe into this market in 2009 with the launch of what it called “the Ladies First Chronograph”, a watch for women who take their horology extremely seriously. Today’s version, the Reference 7150/250R, combines a comfortably-sized 38mm case with Patek’s truly exquisite, hand-wound chronograph movement that’s visible through the transparent back.

Despite the high level of finishing and the 72 diamonds that decorate the bezel, this watch is not a case of “style over substance”. In addition to the movement being hand-wound (both more tactile and more interesting to look at), it features both the column wheel and horizontal clutch systems that define a top-tier chronograph.

It’s made to be used, a fact further reinforced by the “pulsimeter” scale around the outer edge of the opaline dial, a device originally created for doctors’ watches but, in the words of Patek Philippe, useful in the civilian world as it can ‘measure the cadence of an active lifestyle or the slightly increased heart rate’. That may well go upon learning of the £70,590 cost of the watch – but it’s a price that die-hard female horophiles should be willing to consider as an investment to reinforce the fact that, when it comes to high-end mechanical watches, it’s also a woman’s world.

Patek Philippe salon, 16 New Bond Street, London W1S 3SU; patek.com