Li is young, both in age and the world of watches, but has a mature outlook towards timepieces. She opts for what truly resonates with her, be it vintage Patek Philippes that have a story, or shaped watches like Cartier that urge Li to pick design over mechanics, or the independents that have an artistic vision and 

innovative mechanisms.

She also enjoys commissioning pieces rather than visiting boutiques, given the personal connect one ends up having with the watchmaker. How she acquired her unique Kari Voutilainen is proof—the watch was in the works for almost three years, and Li received it in time for graduation last May. “The process with him was very personal because when I designed it, I wanted it to have that one specific retrograde movement. He had only made a limited number, and he told me he used the last mechanism for my watch. I wanted it in a 37.5mm case, which was smaller than his regular 39mm. I also wanted it in titanium, with an Art Deco design on the dial in my favourite colour; I also chose the hands. The design process took a few months, and then I had to wait for it, which was painful in itself. Another worry was that what if my taste changed by the time the watch came—that was a fear at the back of my mind. I was lucky when it came; I could not believe that I designed this.”

The watch went through a design change in 2022, a year before it was delivered. When Li visited Voutilainen’s atelier on her solo trip to Geneva, she saw the unfinished dial and felt the Art Deco numerals didn’t go well with the guillochéd centre. So, she asked to keep it plain, with only the seconds subdial guillochéd. She chose a design from engine-turning patterns that Voutilainen showed her. She later went on to commission two more watches from him for her parents with unique stone dials, one with jade and one with lapis. Another pièce unique that Li has commissioned was a Moritz Grossmann with a Grand Feu enamel dial.

Currently, Li is waiting for a watch that caught her fancy for its innovative mechanism, the Minute Inerte by Xhevdet Rexhepi, a timepiece based on the Swiss railway clocks where instead of having a 60-seconds subdial, he has figuratively made it 58—the seconds hand pauses at 60 for 2 seconds at each lap, and the minute hand jumps by a minute once the second hand starts again. “Its accuracy is the reason why Swiss railways uses it for their clocks, and Xhevdet Rexhepi has done it mechanically for a wristwatch in this layout for the first time. For me that mechanism is something ‘you didn’t know you needed it until you saw it’,” says Li. “So, if a watchmaker can come up with something like this with real-world functionality, it really gets me excited.” Li is currently also waiting to receive her watches from Berneron, Charles Frodsham, Simon Brette, Atelier de Chronométrie, Petermann Bédat, and Naoya Hida.

Her new favourite is the young Chinese brand Logan Kuan Rao, who she got in touch with earlier this year. “A few friends had bought watches from Logan Kuan Rao, and I signed up for one, and their way of making a watch really resonated with me. It’s like a brutal architecture—it’s not perfect but you find perfection in it. Young people like you and I, we try hard to be someone in this world and fulfil parent or peer expectations, but looking at this watch, it’s like brutal honesty, it resonated with me on a spiritual ground. Not every perlage or angle has to be perfectly shiny, you just need to know what you represent for yourself, which is what that watch means to me.”

Li loves Patek Philippe, a brand she often saw on the wrists of parent figures and a lot of adults around her when she was in school. “I really took my time to find my first Patek Philippe—a pre-reference bi-colour cushion case. It’s only been four years since I’ve had it, but it feels much longer and I remember what mindset I was in when I bought that watch. It’s nothing serious and expensive, but spoke to me, so it’s very meaningful to me.”

A Patek Philippe that she hunted for a long time was the Perpetual Calendar Chronograph Ref. 3970 that was made in four series, each a bit different from the other (she says the old soul in her loves perpetual calendar-based movements and classic Patek Philippe mechanisms). “The one I was really gunning for was the first one they ever produced of the four, the reason being the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th series had the same dial and case design, but the first one was different. It looks much more like the  Ref. 2499 which is the precursor to the Ref. 3970. Last year I was able to track one down, and now it’s in my collection and is one of my favourites.

Another one of her favourite stories is about the Patek Philippe Ref. 507, which she acquired last year during her final semester at college. Though she hasn’t shared its story publicly before, she says it fits into her notion that ‘if you’re meant to find something, you will’. Li says that one particular day her evening classes at Harvard Business School got shifted to a Zoom call, allowing her to take a nap before the class.  Li says she dreamt of a shaped watch, which was nothing out of the ordinary given how much time she used to spend browsing shaped watches. After waking up, she was flipping through the pages of the auction archives in her personal library, and she came upon a watch that was similar to the one she had dreamt about. It was the Ref. 507, which she had never seen before. During her Zoom class, browsing for the Ref. 507 on another window, she found it on a Japanese site. It was available. Unfortunately, the transaction wouldn’t go through because she needed a Japanese email account, address, and phone number. However, things turned around when she received an email from the owner who said the watch could only be picked up from Japan. Li convinced him saying she was ready to pay and had family in Tokyo who would pick up the watch for her. Eventually, the watch came to her—and its photograph is her phone’s wallpaper.

These days she is gravitating towards wearing more vintage. “I find vintage watches appealing because every one of them looks different. Even if they have the same reference, they have this beautiful quality of the passage of time, so when they finally reach your hand, it’s a very humbling feeling—you are able to hold something you know is much older than you. I always tell myself that if I take care of it, handle it well, it will outlast me.” Li says vintage Patek Philippes resonate the most with her because of the range of offerings. “They don’t make something like that anymore. When you hold it in your hand, it feels like you’re going back in time.”

While Li has acquired her vintage watches the traditional way through dealers or auctions, she does find ‘the hunt’ for a watch interesting; it’s a natural, spiritual process for her. “It’s like some watches are meant to be found. You have to be at the right time, at the right place, talking to the person that might just mention the friend who has this watch and then you follow up.” One such incident was when she was chatting with her friend who mentioned a watch his friend owned, a Patek Philippe 96A with Breguet numerals, which later landed in her collection.

Like others, Li doesn’t immediately share information about her new watch with the public, like on her social media. “I need my time with it. I have few friends come over, we look at it, and after a few months when I feel like this really did happen and now it’s a part of the family, like a new kid or pet, I gradually introduce it to everyone. I then take photos of it.” Her Instagram was initially for photography, and is now popular for her watches.

Today, Li is lucky to have her work and interests intersect. She first associated with Phillips as a client, during the pandemic, and her interactions with the team and participation in previews allowed her to build rapport with the staff. The Head of Department at Phillips, learning about her podcast on watches, The Waiting List, which she co-hosts with Daniel Sum and Lung Lung Thun, offered her a job. Li was hesitant, so he took off his watch, and asked her to sell it to him. It was a Daytona, and Li described the watch. “He said, ‘What you did in the past two minutes is what we need. You need to have the basic understanding of what the model is, what the movement is, what era the watch is from, about the dial, bezel, and so on, how to describe the watch and you need to relay that to the client’,” recalls Li. She felt she had a shot at it, and joined Phillips late last year. So far, she has been a part of two auction seasons, the December 2023 sale and the June 2024 sale, and is now preparing for the December 2024 sale. Her role as a consultant allows her to stay connected with a wider watch collector community and industry experts. “The best vintage watches come up during auctions and I don’t mean just in the sales catalogue, but actually in the auction room on the wrists of collectors,” she says.

The Waiting List podcast also keeps her connected to the community, as the hosts often chat with industry experts. Li was initially invited on the podcast as a guest, and the founding members later asked her to be a part of the team. Available on Spotify and Apple among others, it’s an hour-long episode a week, with over 200 episodes available for a listen—it averages 3,000-6,000 listeners a week.

Buying and selling watches are two sides of the same coin for Li. “When you have access to collectors and dealers and industry experts that you’re lucky enough to call friends, they know your taste. They find something and it reminds them of you, and it’s the same with selling. I prefer trading my watches with my friends, because then I can always track it and have the opportunity to buy it back. What I sell on rare occasions, I sell to people I know. Or when I have to trade, it’s with dealers or consigning at an auction house or bidding on an auction house’s private sale,” she says. “I have regretted buying and selling many watches. Also, when you buy without knowledge, it’s hard to sell it because you don’t want to sell it to an uneducated collector. Then it sits in your mind and becomes a painful memory,” she added.

The latest watch she bought was a Gilbert Albert, who was the Head of Design at Patek Philippe in the mid-50s to 60s, and had designed a series of watches. She bought one of those references. A few more Cartiers are on their way to becoming a part of Li’s extravagant collection.

Four years in, Li’s outlook towards gathering knowledge hasn’t changed, but now she values education more than ownership. “At one point I felt I needed to own it to appreciate it, but no longer. Now I feel there’s not much meaning in ownership and I should be able to appreciate it without owning it.” So, what does she love about watches? “I’ve been asked this several times, and each time my answer changes. Earlier I’ve said that it has been the people in watches. This is the constant, it is something that keeps the hobby alive and fun.”