How Swatch hopes to recapture the MoonSwatch magic with new Blancpain collab
The groundbreaking, plastic-fantastic, injection-moulded Swatch watch was a fashion-forward crutch for Switzerland’s ailing giants 40 years back.
It bolstered household names like Omega, Longines, Rado, Tissot et al, all desperately consolidated by the late Nicholas Hayek following the devastation wrought in the Seventies by cheap, electronic quartz tech’ from East Asia.
Ironically, at the hands of Hayek Sr’s scion, Nick Jr, Swatch is now giving hope for the watchmakers hit hardest by the rise of the Apple Watch. Only this time, it’s those at the other end of the spectrum in need of help, those costing hundreds of Swiss francs rather than tens of thousands (the top bracket of watches is solely responsible for export values rising 11.4 per cent to CHF24.8bn in 2022, despite a mere 0.3 per cet rise in shipped units).
In other words, ‘My First Swiss Watch’ is tanking while the elite invest more than ever in ‘My Son’s Heirloom’.
Nick Hayek, like his father, was not to be caught napping. In watertight secrecy, Swatch’s boffins have colluded with luxury stablemate Omega to reimagine its iconic Speedmaster: the chronograph that Buzz Aldrin strapped around his spacesuit before bounding about the moon in 1969. This is a watch so perfectly conceived as to be near-identical half a century on, still NASA’s go-to wristwear aboard the ISS. It’s a cult in its own right, which has now birthed a whole new cult, capable of packing-out Carnaby Street with fevered queues.
It is of course the ‘MoonSwatch’ quartz chronograph, cased in Swatch’s slick ‘bioceramic’ polymer derived from castor-oil plants.
And then: the coveted sans-serif Omega logo, paired with ‘Speedmaster’ in those iconic joined-up italics, complete with NASA-spec Velcro strap, framed by a logarithmic calculation scale satisfying the most anal Omega #watchnerd, right down to the most cultish telltale: the ‘dot over 90’.
It says everything of the mythology surrounding the original ‘Moonwatch’ that Swatch’s reinterpretation would spark such an inferno of demand from Millennials and Gen-Zedders come ‘drop day’. Even Hayek Jr never expected weeks-long (yes, ‘weeks’) queues snaking around 110 select Swatch boutiques dotted around the world from 9am on 26 March.
There were queues of cool kids wearing Apple Watches, itching to get back into analogue timetelling. The same cool kids, plus a few more ‘connoisseur’ sorts, will be queuing this Saturday in anticipation of Swatch’s next bioceramic collab’ with Swatch Group stablemate Blancpain, teased just this Monday with requisite red-hot speculation.
(We’re calling a ‘Sistem 51 Fathoms’ placky mechanical version of the ‘Fifty Fathoms’ diver made by Blancpain since 70 years ago – the brand stoically positioned upon rebirth in the Eighties as never deigning to make a quartz watch.)
Those not averse to a sleeping bag and a thermos flask flipped the MoonSwatch for thousands over RRP on Ebay. But as Hayek stressed from the outset, MoonSwatch in all its colourways (11, each embodying a member of our Solar System, including Moon and Sun) is not limited. Sure enough, anyone can now stroll into one of those 110 shops and take their pick.
Well, to a point. As the ensuing ‘Moonshine Gold’ editions have proved – central seconds hand rendered in Omega’s special alloy of harvest-moon gold – the MoonSwatch still inspires feverish demand.
Last Wednesday’s dazzling ‘Blue Moon’ night sky saw a Moonshine version of the blue ‘Mission to Neptune’ model and a borderline desperate plea for calm on Swatch’s website: “We’re working around the clock behind the scenes to make the 11 unique watches and are replenishing our selected Swatch stores regularly… so you should indeed be able to get your hands on one.”
Cynics might level that MoonSwatch – and therefore this Saturday’s ‘x Blancpain’ drop – is a masterful, affordable articulation of the horological zeitgeist for ‘hype’ (just Google ‘Tiffany Patek Philippe Nautilus for context). But there’s no denying: it’s fun, gives hope to a venerable industry facing a tide of ‘black mirrors’ gleaming from younger wrists, plus, crucially, it’s a moonshot in the arm for the post-pandemic high street.