It's Skin Deep

On the 20th anniversary of its creation, Swatch Skin revives

- Darren Ho

THE TYPICAL DAY at The Strand can only be best described as “organised chaos”, what with a throng of tourists frantically rushing to catch anything from Kinky Boots, Wicked, to The lion King, et al. david Tennant was appearing in don Juan in Soho and a small group of doctor Who fans were hanging around the actors’ entrances of theatres along the stretch to see if they could catch sight of him. But add to that some 300 members of the press from all around the world descending on the iconic space that was 180 The Strand that day, right in front of Temple station and the crowd stress instantly tripled.

The occasion was the launch of Swatch’s refreshed Skin collection, a perennial part of the brand’s portfolio since 1997 and one of the projects carlo Giordanetti, now creative director of the brand and then vice-president of marketing, helped to oversee and launch. it comes as no surprise that 20 years later, he saw an opportunity to recharge a Swatch classic with new energy and style.

“When i returned to the brand five years ago, my first project was to oversee and launch the Sistem51 range, which was a great success and not an easy one at all,” he recalled. “after the first and second versions of Sistem51 was launched, we looked at which products in Swatch needed new innovation and we realised that Skin was a range that, while it still looked great, had not experienced much renewal in a long time and we decided to work on that.”

The first Skin watches in 1997 were ultraslim quartz pieces in a plastic unibody sized at 34mm, which is small for today. and though he could simply have the size adjusted and kept everything else more or less the same in order to maintain a minimal cost footprint, Giordanetti decided to gut the watch and start from a fresh new perspective.

LO-FI, AU NATUREL