You’ll surely have seen by now the internet-breaking teasers from Swatch. The typographic logo of Audemars Piguet’s famed Royal Oak, awash in bright graphic colours, rendered as ‘Royal Pop’, posted on the social media feeds of Swatch, and teasing coyly at a collaboration. Surely, it couldn’t be? Or could it?
What swiftly followed were days of fervent, heated speculation. AI-generated images started to flood our feeds, even photos of bogus watches on wrists, as anticipation built. The hints were clear enough to anyone in the know about the famed Royal Oak, and Swatch did break new ground all those years ago when it partnered with luxury brands Omega and Blancpain. The difference, though, is that while Omega and Blancpain are part of the very same Swatch group, Audemars Piguet is proudly independent and the last of the great haute horlogerie manufactures still in the hands of its founding families.
Well, put your doubts and anticipations aside now because the two brands have officially revealed what may be the watch collaboration of the year: the Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop collection.
The Royal Pop draws from two of these watch brands’s icons. From Swatch, its Pop collection of clickable worn-on-a-neck-strap pocket watch pieces from the 1980s that poked gentle fun at the classicism of the style. And from Audemars Piguet, well, obviously the Royal Oak of 1972 with its signature octagonal bezel that has come to define the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s modern identity.
This new collection bridges the two ideas as an eight-part series of modern, playful pocket watches in bioceramic with Royal Oak-style cases. The style and palette draws naturally from Pop Art, infusing the pieces with vibrant, playful colour. In what might be a playful nod to borderless, global appeal, the eight colourways are named in various languages. Huit Blanc in French, Lan Ba in Mandarin, Ocho Negro in Spanish, Blaue Acht in German, Otto Rosso in Italian, Otg Roz in Swiss Romansh, Orenji Hachi in Japanese, and Green Eight in, well, English.
Perhaps more pointedly, the Pop Art reference echoes and helps prove how much of a pop culture symbol the Royal Oak has become, transcending a product of horology into something a lot of people—there are endless, tiresome, and frankly pointless debates online about brand and value dilution for Audemars Piguet—seem to truly care about.
Inside, the Royal Pop pocket watches beat with the heart of Swatch’s signature Sistem51 mechanical movement in a new manual-winding version . Yes, that’s right, these aren’t battery-powered quartz watches. The Sistem51, first introduced by Swatch in 2013, is groundbreaking in its own way. It remains the only Swiss-made mechanical watch movement assembled entirely automatically by machines. To craft these Royal Pop pieces, Swatch and Audemars Piguet have devised eight patents–one of which relates to the barrel drum that gives the pocket watches a 90-hour power reserve.
It’s a fascinating move, bridging what we might think of as fancy watchmaking with horology for the masses. But it’s not, in fact, the first time these two brands have worked together. The technical sides of Audemars Piguet and Swatch partnered to co-develop and introduce in 2018 something called the Nivachron balance spring (it’s present in these Royal Pop pieces, of course), an anti-magnetic component that has found its way into the hearts of watches made by many other brands.
Technicalities aside, what’s fun about these Royal Pop pocket watches is a see-through caseback, guarded on the dial front and back by sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating. The movement is decorated with digital-printed Pop Art flourishes à la Roy Lichtenstein, and features a useful power reserve indicator to show when it needs to be wound.
The Royal Pop watches are shaped like the Royal Oak in bioceramic, and feature not just the famous octagonal bezel but even the connoisseur’s detail: eight hexagonal screws affixed exactly so their heads form a continuous line. The choice of eight colourways is a nod to that eight-sided bezel signature, and the collection features two models: six Lépine-style pocket watches with two hands and the crown at 12 o’clock, and two Savonette-style pocket watches with a small seconds subdial and the crown at 3 o’clock. All will feature the Royal Oak’s gridded tapisserie dial, and the bioceramic bezels and casebacks have a vertical satin finish that pays homage to the decorative techniques used on the Royal Oak.
Because these Royal Pop watches come on calfskin lanyards on three lengths, there are potentially endless ways to wear and style them. All of these can be clicked on and off the housing cases attached to the lanyards—where Swatch got the Pop name from—and each lanyard is also sold separately so you can mix and match. Take a Royal Pop off the housing, though, and that’s an open invitation if ever there were one for customisers to go wild. Demand is expected to be downright frenzied—there are reports online of camps forming in the US outside of Swatch boutiques days before the launch. Gird your loins!
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Blaue Acht, $535
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Green Eight, $535
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Huit Blanc, $535
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Lan Ba, $570
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Ocho Negro, $535
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Orenji Hachi, $535
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Otg Roz, $570
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Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Otto Rosse, $535
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop collection is available from 16 May at Swatch Ion Orchard, Marina Bay Sands, and Vivocity. Purchases are limited to one watch per person, per day, and per store.
