I was flipping through a recent edition of a Women's Wear Daily special Accessories Supplement last week, and as expected, it was full of articles and photo spreads for luxury leather handbags and expensive Swarovski crystal and pearl encrusted jewelry.

But somewhere near the back was an article about a supposed resurgence in popularity of digital watches, the sort of dorky, sort of childish little brother of traditional face watches. Since it's invention in the early 70s, the digital watch has been treated more as a novelty then a serious accessory. But some of the latest versions, like ones produced by Chanel and Penguin, are replacing upgrading the expected rubber and plastic, to gold, silver and crystal.

The article notes that an growing trend of tech-y watches might have something to do with the popularity in general of multi-tasking cell phones, SideKicks, iPods, and BlackBerry devices.

Sebastian DiBari, a managing director for a watch firm called Sector Group USA, told WWD “this niche is geared toward an individual who’s more interested in sporty technology with lots of functions.”

David Johnson, a vice president of Casio Timepieces, (a division of the company who brought all of us our scientific calculators back in high school, now produces sports watches with enough functions to make your head hurt), told WWD that digital watches are popular not only because people are “yearning for items from the past,” but also for the supremely dorky reason that “now you don’t even have to reset your watch for daylight savings.”

I’m not all that interested in wearing anything that tries to hard look like an official hunk of machinery on my wrist. A simple, nostalgic-for-the-80’s digital face will do fine for me, like the patent leather ones Marc Jacobs is collaborating with Fossil to make and that will be available next fall.

But still, my favorite comes from fredflare.com, the online shopping site dedicated solely to deliciously tacky and kitschy fashion and accessories. The description of their talking Japanese watches reads like this:

“Think of these watches by Japan's Marchand de Legumes as your new exchange student friends from the East. They will teach you Japanese as they tell you the time in their native tongue.”

That’s so rad.