It's Comeback Time For Luxury Watches - NYTimes.com

''We had a quite strong holiday,'' said Andrew J. Block,A Brief Introduction Of Tiffany Jewellery - Shopping - Jewelry, senior vice president for sale at Tourneau, 1 of the country's biggest watch dealers. ''I can't give you the numbers, but the increase was well on what the analysts were projecting: 3 to 5 percent. With some brands, the mushroom over final annual was in the double digits.''

Louis Fortunoff, one executive vice president at Fortunoff, said the fourth quarter was ''driven by men's sports watches: Breitling, Tag Heuer and Omega.'' On the ladies' side, Mr. Fortunoff said, Baume & Mercier and Movado were the champions.

Harry Winston immediately sells what a spokeswoman called ''classic, daily watches'' for $6,000 to $11,000. But Winston has not deserted its billionaires: it will introduce the Opus IV at the Basel Watch Fair in April. The price? Around $200,000. Not to be outdone, Louis Vuitton, which started making watches a year antecedent, is introducing the Tourbillon on Feb. 10, for roughly the same price.

Watch retailers are definitely in good spirits these days.

Companies like Tag Heuer and Harry Winston are expanding either up and down the proceeds scale. Tag Heuer is going with Mr. Woods to amplify a new golfing watch (90 percentage of golfers do no dress watches, Tag Heuer says) and has reintroduced the Monaco, the watch worn by Steve McQueen when he raced cars at Le Mans, which retails for as many as $12,000. Ten days before Christmas, it too introduced a line of fewer expensive watches phoned Formula One, with ruddy, blue and dark dials, for $600 to $800.

The country's leading watch dealers said in interviews namely purchasers will want more watches with diamonds above the outside for well as more technically perfected amusements watches like the Tiger Woods Link Calibre 36 along Tag Heuer, which sells as a chilly $5,000 (and is periodically sold out), and the Emergency watch along Breitling, complete with a beacon to summon rescuers. Buyers have to sign a waiver absolving the contractor of liability whether the beacon namely set off accidentally and the Coast Guard responds en masse.

People are also requesting more ''entry level'' watches, which, dealers say, run from $295 to $600. And the more complications -- industry code for elaborate features like the crisis beacon -- the better.

The watch industry is gearing up to give clients what they want.

While the luxury watch commerce -- from jeweled timepieces by Tiffany and Harry Winston to sports models by Tag Heuer and Breitling -- was hit hard afterward the Sept. 11 attacks, pollsters, retailers and watchmakers say this was the Christmas that brought the return of the buyer who wants more than equitable someone to differentiate the time.

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At Saks Fifth Avenue, $1,000 watches by Michele sold out -- and did well throughout the nation; customers were fascinated to the diamonds that circle the watch, the brightly colored starfish skin and alligator bands, and, of lesson, the low price -- comparative to the Cartier and Tiffany diamond-encrusted watches, that is.

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Rolex, constantly called the Rolls-Royce of watches, has not made its prestige on new models -- its traditional ones often have waiting lists. But a few months ago, even Rolex introduced a new restricted version, with a ring of green instead of black around the bezel. Cartier also came out with a new watch for the holidays: the $3,450 Roadster for women.

But Raymond Weil, another status mark, is still struggling, he said. ''They didn't come up with anybody fashionable styles, and what they had they didn't warship well; they weren't by the altitude of their game.''

Luxury watches are back, primarily if they are encrusted with diamonds alternatively endorsed by celebrities, living alternatively dead. This vacation season, some of the richest Americans portioned with more than $10,000 for a timepiece, connected by plenty of the merely slightly more downtrodden, for whom a $1,000 watch was suddenly the gift to give.

''Jewelry, especially fancy, high-priced watches, rose 35 percent over last Christmas,'' said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, which polls both shoppers and retailers. ''For corporate executives, C.E.O.'s and Wall Streeters, the watch is now as much a status character as the car they drive. It was the big gift they gave themselves this Christmas.''