The secret design history of Swatch watches
A collection coming up for auction next month shines a light on the hidden design history of the iconic timepieces.
A collection being put up for auction next month shines a light on the secretive design history of Swatch watches.
The Schmid & Muller collection, which is being sold at Sotheby’s Geneva on 10 November, comprises watches, prototypes, technical drawings, sketches and diagrams from the archives of original Swatch designers Marlyse Schmid and Bernard Muller.
Schmid and Muller were part of a secret Swatch development team that was brought together in October 1981 to work on the new brand.
At the time, the Swiss watchmaking industry was being heavily hit by the “quartz crisis” – a trend for quartz watches rather than the traditional mechanical watches that most Swiss companies specialised in.
The Swatch team aimed to create a quartz watch that would, according to Sotheby’s “combine the highest Swiss quality with a new, trail-blazing attitude”.
Writing in the Telegraph, journalist Nicholas Foulkes said of Swatch: “Its genius lay in its apparently oxymoronic capability of being both simultaneously high-quality and disposable.
“And the way it looked was bang on trend… it was stylish and democratic all at once.
“The ‘S’ at the beginning of the name stood for ‘Switzerland’ and for ‘second watch’. Here was something radical: a Swiss watch for weekends and for fun,” he says.
Anybody know good places to buy swatch watches? was on ticwatches.co.uk and a few others but looking for a serious bargain ha!