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Please watch out soon for an email, including new year announcements and your first links newsletter. I don’t know when to finish since I am on over 200 links, but you will get it by or before Sunday!
Since Jan 1st, I have been chasing time. I prioritized my social life last summer, and coupled with my big move, I have been playing catch up since the year began. I hung up the bathroom wall shelf six months after moving in. I finally took my tanks, tees, and underwear out of my suitcase and into the new dresser I just got, and I transcribed this interview I did with Brynn Wallner of Dimepiece (website) last September.
After a chat in June with my internet pal and writer Ana Karina Zatarain about longing for a watch since we turned 30, I asked Brynn to help me, Karina, and others looking to buy a watch demystify the process. Below are screenshots from that conversation with Karina.
I was worried I had waited too long to send this out, but my editor thinks it is timely because something about January feels “timey.”
Brynn Wallner: I am a journalist and founder of Dimepiece (Instagram), a platform dedicated to women and watches.
Subrina Heyink: When did you launch Dimepiece?
BW: Late summer of 2020.
SH: Is this a side gig? Are you a journalist full-time?
BW: The journalism evolved out of running Dimepiece. My career before this had nothing to do with watches. I was an English major in college and always wanted to write, but I was intimidated by writing and having my work published. I got a job on the editorial team at Sotheby’s, producing content for their website to generate interest from a younger audience. I was editing these pieces about watches and got super intimate with the material. I saw the watches in person because I worked at the auction house. I got to see rare pieces and was taken by them. I found myself doing side research. I started noticing people’s watches on the subway and in movies.
Before this, I knew little about watches and never cared to own one. I was struck by the fact that the watch industry had missed me (as a representation of a consumer group). I was 29, working this great job, and none of my friends were talking about watches. I realized it was because [the industry] didn’t know how to speak to women or anyone who wasn’t their traditional idea of what a watch collector is.
Sotheby’s let me go the day NY shut down for the pandemic because they had also been acquired. I managed to get down to Florida, where my mum and brother were at the time, and I managed to do nothing because I was lucky enough to get severance. So, I had money, wasn’t stressed, and decided to do nothing. I was so lucky to have that. I looked at my life, reprioritized, and figured out what I wanted to do. I decided on women and watches because I knew there was something there.