I Got Michelle Obama’s Tiny Timex
I started wearing an Apple Watch in 2022 when it came with a subscription to Future, an app-based fitness program that pairs you with a real personal trainer. My husband had already been wearing one for years, but I was resistant to something so bulky and ugly. Soon, though, I couldn’t imagine my life without one. I could monitor my workouts but also keep an eye on emails and messages without being tethered to my phone. I stopped my Future workouts but kept the watch.
Then I began to hate how beholden I was to it. It freed me of my phone but its constant pings and buzzes started to control me. I wasn’t picking up my phone as much, but I was glancing at my wrist every couple of minutes and that felt wrong, too. I also hated how constricting the silicone strap was. Plus, I could never wear a cute analog watch because the Apple Watch had trained me to become so dependent on it.
I finally swapped out my Apple Watch for the new, slimmer Oura Ring 5 a few months ago because I still wanted some biometric-tracking capabilities but in a less obtrusive form. I could now wear a regular watch, and the only one that appealed to me was a tiny Timex that we first spotted on Michelle Obama.
Timex launched the Cavatina in 1959 as its first watch exclusively made for women and recently updated its design to be even smaller than the original watch faces. Obama’s watch is the Cavatina Mini, which has a 17-mm. case — sized down from the 19-mm. Cavatina — and a brushed stainless-steel expansion band. (Strategist deputy editor Simone Kitchens tested this one.) The newest version of the Cavatini Mini comes with a leather strap, and that’s the one I called in.
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It’s somehow even tinier than I imagined, but I love it more for that reason. I put it on and it literally feels like nothing. The black crocodile-grain leather strap is so narrow — not much thicker than a standard hair tie — that the adjustment holes basically take up its entire width. It doesn’t get in the way of typing on my laptop or get caught in my sleeve the way the Apple Watch did. The whole thing is delightfully retro (oval face, ’60s-script Timex logo) and understated. If I were a person who accessorized, it would be so easy to create a stack of bracelets just like Obama did with her silver baubles.
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The leather watch also comes in a gold-tone case with brown strap, and, soon, in a gold-tone case with deep-red strap (available for preorder). I am also intrigued by the more classic Cavatina, which has a longer oval shape and is two mm. bigger, Roman numerals, and all-caps Timex logo. Still tiny and so wearable.
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