Monday Morning Madness Featuring A Bunch Of Crazy Colorful Swatch Watches

Plus an artistic Seiko 5 Sports 55th Anniversary COIN PARKING DELIVERY Limited Edition and a striking Rebellion × Label Noir Re-volt in multicolored carbon fiber

Lex Stolk

February 13, 2023

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Not too long ago, I visited the Swatch Museum in Biel. It blew my mind. What an abundance of fantastic watches. There were influential timepieces and iconic creations but also stuff I forgot about. Stuff I forgot I wore a long time ago, like my Sir Swatch SIR (GB111) from 1986. And also the Swatch Snowpass Shaun Palmer (SHB100) from 1997 that I had on while riding my Cannondale Super V 4000DH. And now that RJ brought this huge bag filled with vintage and new, crazy colorful Swatch watches to the office, it’s all coming back to me — again! Since Swatch set the tone, I also included not-too-serious timepieces in this slightly rebellious and off-beat Monday Morning Madness story. Have a look at the Seiko 5 Sports 55th Anniversary COIN PARKING DELIVERY Limited Edition and the Rebellion × Label Noir Re-volt in multicolored carbon fiber.

You can’t dislike a Swatch. Even if you’re a watch purist who wants nothing to do with quartz watches, the Swatch is the watch that makes your mechanical watch tick, so to speak. “Respect the plastic” is my motto when it comes to Swatch. And the Swatch Irony YCS4000 “The Restless,” a sleek, black-dialed aluminum chronograph from 1997, proves that the brand also did great stuff with other materials. I know this is not a “Dear … Bring Back The …” story, but please Swatch, could you bring back this awesome timepiece? With these good looks, it beats chronographs that cost several times as much.

Swatch Irony YCS4000 “The Restless” on the right

Plowing through a bunch of crazy colorful Swatch watches

When RJ brought in a selection of his Swatch collection in a large bag, the fun started with the unpacking. Right afterward, we kept the fun rolling by going through the different models with a paper, offline version of the Swatch-Clopedia at hand. It’s nice to see different models from different eras. Somehow they immediately capture my attention, and they also bring a happy vibe. It must be a combination of colors and memories of happy times gone by. Anyway, before I get too sentimental, let’s focus on the watches themselves. And for your information, Jorg is writing a comprehensive story about great Swatch creations that will come online very soon. You know why. Swatch came on the scene in 1983, and the brand is celebrating its 40^th anniversary this year.

Wearing a Mondrian disguised as a Swatch

The Swatch × MoMA special edition on my wrist is one of the love creations inspired by the art found in The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The 34mm watch (GZ350) depicts Piet Mondrian’s Composition In Oval With Color Planes 1, and it creates a wonderfully delicate and stylish watch. I must say, it went well with the sweater too.

And while wearing a Mondrian, seeing and handling all those different Swatch models led to two things. First, I went online and bought myself the Sir Swatch (SUOB169), the 41mm New Gent remake of the 34mm original. Quite a big difference in size. And while I was paying for the watch, I thought of writing about wearing an updated watch from the past. Will it be a blast from the past in a positive sense? Or will this shot at reliving the good old days prove to be a blank? Check this space for my €73 watch experiment!

The artistic Seiko 5 Sports 55th Anniversary COIN PARKING DELIVERY Limited Edition

It’s a relatively small step from the colorful world of Swatch to the kaleidoscopic Seiko 5 Sports collection. The Seiko Sportmatic 5 debuted in 1963, and it stood out because of five key specifications, like the unbreakable Diaflex mainspring and the Diashock shock-resistant system. The collection grew and evolved over time, and nowadays, the 5 Sports is a fan favorite. It’s also Seiko’s playground, where the designers allow themselves a lot of creative freedom and connect with contemporary styles and tastes. Last year, Seiko already introduced the Seiko 5 Sports 55th Anniversary Ultraseven SRPJ79, a watch that pays tribute to the popular spinoff in the Ultraman series that heavily influenced Japanese pop culture. It was the first of eight special editions in total. The second of the eight is the Seiko 5 Sports 55th Anniversary COIN PARKING DELIVERY Limited Edition SRPK02, a collaboration with a Japanese artist.

This model made in collaboration with COIN PARKING DELIVERY, an artist that kicked off their career in 2018, shows the little pop-style details that made the artist quickly gain popularity. Like the Maurice Lacroix Aikon #tide Benzilla, the dial of the watch is the artist’s miniature canvas that can have a large impact. It provokes strong love or hate reactions.

The new Seiko 5 Sports 55th Anniversary COIN PARKING DELIVERY Limited Edition comes in a series of 1,500 pieces and has a price of €450. And it’s not a watch you need to take too seriously. You either get it and think it’s fun or you don’t. No need to make an effort to try and like it. On the other hand, a glance at the watch might have this two-tone Seiko 5 Sports mistaken for something very, very serious. I’m talking about the steel and yellow gold Rolex Submariner (126613LB). Having your €450 watch mistaken for a €15,600 one, if only momentarily, is seriously funny. More serious information, such as specifications, can be found here.

The Macau-colored Rebellion × Label Noir Re-volt

This version of the undoubtedly polarizing (yet also very striking and colorful) Re-Volt is the result of a conversation between Emmanuel Curti, artistic director of Label Noir, and the creative people at Rebellion. The Re-volt is a three-hand watch and a limited edition of just 20 pieces, each with a price of CHF 50,000. Several elements fight for your attention. The winner, in my opinion, is the 38.5 × 40.35 × 13.5mm carbon case with energetic red and yellow elements that are an impression of a warm Macau night. The fiery and exotic colors also brighten up the indexes and hands of the open-worked watch. And inside the lightweight yet chunky case beats a skeletonized, proprietary movement with manual winding and a 48-hour power reserve.

Have a look at the Label Noir website for more information and availability. And if the color scheme of the Rebellion × Label Noir Re-volt is not to your liking, there are also three other versions of the Re-Volt 3 Hands available. These noncollaborative creations have cases in blue, green, and red camo-patterned carbon — pretty mad stuff as well.

Find and follow me at Lex Stolk • Instagram.

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Monday Morning Madness Featuring A Bunch Of Crazy Colorful Swatch Watches

My favourite is Swatch Flik Flak Dinosauritos.
Pity it is made only for kids, tiny, otherwise I would wear one in a rotation. 🙂

What a bright and fun Monday morning article!

It’s a strange hiatus at the moment with the new year launches done and the huge wave about to hit the shore in just over a month. Stuff like this is a fun distraction.

I never really “got” Swatch in the same way RJ clearly did and does – even though we are the same age. Maybe the land of whisky and haggis wasn’t quite as cosmopolitan in the 80s and 90s as Holland! I remember in the 90s in particular EVERYTHING had to be Tag Heuer. If you didn’t own a Tag you weren’t “cool” – including the guy with wealthy parents in my class who got a Rolex for his 16th birthday ?

Puts me in mind of the blue Swatch with nautical flags for hour markers that I wore for a few years in the 80s. Had the intertwined crystal protectors too because I wanted to be cool. Almost wish I hadn’t traded it off at military school. I’m okay with not being cool but Swatch celebrating 40 years is a little rattling.

Got my first Swatch, the Jellyfish, in Basel while studying abroad in 1984. Then while working in Taipei in the 1990s my girlfriend, now wife and I picked up a dozens of them like candy. We still have them all with 5 or 6 still unworn in their original packaging.
Per Warky’s comment I also bought in Taipei a green Tag Heuer Professional Formula 1 Quartz which my teenage son now wears occasionally. I had (and still have) a 1991 Explorer II bought new in Tokyo where I lived before moving to Taiwan.. I remember while the tritium lume still worked at the time I was blown away by the Tag’s completely lumed dial and it still glows brightly 30 years later while the Rolex’s is long gone.

SC
TamOBanter says:

Feb 14, 2023 at 14:57

In a fit of extreme irony, most of the cheap Swatch watches I have bought have been incredibly accurate. As in +2s per month. ?

1. dr
  JakobR says:
  
  Feb 15, 2023 at 01:58
  
  Well, I assume my Swatch watches would be too if I had remembered to change their batteries over the less decade or two. On the other hand my almost 32 year old Polar EX II just needs a little shake on the wrist to get it going and then it still runs within COSC standards. Oh, and it’s got that sweet tritium patina as a bonus.
  
Warky says:

Feb 14, 2023 at 23:27

That Tag is a belter!?

The craziest thing is, the Rebellion looks like the cheapest of the bunch! ?

In my last job, we used to have meetings around a big table. There were about 12 of us. The most respected and authoritative person wore a Swatch Skin. And there was another person who was frankly embarassing. He was the least intelligent and liked to make fun of people he considered “weak” or “weird”. He wore an expensive black-dialled, no-date diving watch.
I think everyone should buy a Swatch and wear it for a couple of weeks. It is very informative.

Warky says:

Feb 14, 2023 at 23:31

Not everyone who wears a Sub is that guy.

And not everyone who wears a Swatch is some kind of Zen horological guru.

All sorts of folks wear all sorts of watches for all sorts of reasons. Best not to judge them for what is on their wrist.

1. SC
  TamOBanter says:
  
  Feb 15, 2023 at 13:53
  
  Not everyone, no.
  But enough of them.
  
  1. Warky says:
    
    Feb 15, 2023 at 20:14
    
    Love to know your data source.
    
    Suspect you don’t have one.

Thanks for the article ,always learning something new. Does anyone knows if there is a GMT SWATCH ? thanks