If you’ve visited the Swatch website recently, you’ll have been greeted by a rather cryptic message: “The real wonders are happening in May”.
It’s a fun little dig at Watches and Wonders, the watch show that dominated headlines a couple of weeks ago, but it’s what follows that has me buzzing: a blank space, and then the now-familiar format ‘X Swatch’.
We’ve seen that format before. Omega X Swatch gave us the MoonSwatch, and Blancpain X Swatch delivered the Scuba Fifty Fathoms. Both were enormously popular collaborations that sent fans queuing around the block and sent the secondary market into a frenzy.
Ever since, speculation has been rife about what Swatch might do next. With May now just three days away, we won’t have to wonder for much longer.
Reading the clues…
Also featured on the teaser page are loops – eight of them, arranged in a flower-like formation. They appear to be made of leather with visible stitching, and each one comes in a different colour: light pink, dark pink, light blue, dark blue, light green, dark green, white, and black.
Putting my Sherlock Holmes Deerstalker on, I’m seeing eight loops, eight colours, and the word “wonders” front and centre – could this collection be Eight Wonders of the World themed?
The MoonSwatch collection was tied to the planets of the solar system, the Fifty Fathoms collaboration drew inspiration from the world’s oceans, so, following that logic, the next collecting could be very much land or world-based.
That’s my prediction, and I’m fairly confident in it.
Which watch gets the Swatch treatment?
That brings us to the more tantalising question: whose watch is it? The MoonSwatch was built around the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch representing space, and the Fifty Fathoms was a diving watch for an ocean theme.
If this new collection is land-themed, celebrating the great monuments and landscapes of our world, the mind naturally wanders to field watches and travel companions.
One candidate that immediately springs to mind is the Hamilton Khaki Field. It has the rugged, exploratory spirit that a wonders-of-the-world theme demands, and Hamilton, like Omega and Blancpain before it, sits comfortably within the Swatch Group family.
A Swatch-ified Khaki Field in eight colourways, each inspired by a different world wonder, would make a compelling collection.
But there’s another possibility that fits just as neatly. The Wonders of the World also evokes travel, and eight destinations around the globe suggests an international dimension. Could we be looking at an Omega Aqua Terra Worldtimer?
Ambitious, yes. But I could see that being extremely popular.
Alternatively, a Longines collab could lean into the brand’s aviation and exploration history. A Swatch X Longines Spirit Zulu Time, perhaps?
Whatever the watch, we won’t have long to wait – May isn’t far away. We’ll be covering the announcement as soon as it drops. Watch this space.
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