After the already legendary MoonSwatch, what new surprise watch for Swatch on September 9th?

This was the watchmaking launch of the decade. And one of the best kept secrets on the planet. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the release of the MoonSwatch, a fusion between a Swatch Bioceramic and an Omega Speedmaster, turned the watchmaking world upside down. The eleven quartz Swatch models (one per planet in our solar system) took the shape of the watch that accompanied each step of NASA astronauts until they walked on the Moon in 1969. "I don't think there's ever been a watch name so quickly known in the world," said Nick Hayek, head of the Swatch Group and the originator of the idea. At the end of Covid, we wanted to offer consumers a playful, quality product, "Swiss made", with real added value and which has no alternative. It's an Omega, but it's still a Swatch. We followed our instincts, our ideas, trusted the creativity and industrial power of the group, all prepared in the greatest secrecy. As a result, one million MoonSwatches will have sold for 260 euros in 2022, in the space of eight months. This year, the figure should be even more imposing, with the ramp-up of production, and the arrival of the collection in new countries and points of sale.

And now, it's time for episode 2 of the Swatch X saga, as the brand celebrates the 40th anniversary of its first watches this year: a mysterious advertising campaign has just appeared in the press: we see a swimming pool, in which we see underwater a map, a watch silhouette and a date: 9.9.23. What can we expect this time? Two hypotheses seem the most rational. First an Omega Seamaster Diver 300M, James Bond's favorite watch. After all, in one of his last campaigns, Daniel Craig aka 007 presented the one who was going to sit on his wrist in a swimming pool. Continuing the collaboration between Swatch and Omega would also seem just as logical.

But another track could well be the right one: Blancpain's Fifty Fathoms, which this year celebrates the 70th anniversary of his birth. The one that was the first modern diver's watch, imagined at the initiative of the first French combat swimmers, would thus find a wider recognition and notoriety, and well deserved, than among diving enthusiasts and beautiful watchmaking. It was indeed the mythical Captain Robert "Bob" Maloubier (former agent of Churchill's SOE), and Ensign Claude Riffaud, commando and paratrooper, who then suggested to the naval staff the creation of a corps of French combat swimmers. And who will lay the rules for the best diver's watch there is.
And then, after all, it is said that when imagining the MoonSwatch, a prototype of Blancpain Fifty Fathoms x Swatch had also been created. So, Seamaster or Fifty Fathoms? The buzz is launched, answer on September 9th...