SDC Weekly 145; Decoding Swatch's Alice in Wonderland teasers; Why 'never replicated' rarely means it
Cleguer's Innate escapement, Otsuka Lotec No.8, a record $2m Cartier Crash, Japanese watchmakers' shares up 500%, the long way of forming taste, Darwin's lubrication of family life, and more!
🚨 Welcome back to SDC Weekly! Given it’s a bank holiday in the U.K., I tried my best to stick to the 20-minute reading time.
Today we’ll start with a guessing game… if you haven’t seen it, the Swatch homepage is teasing something (and clearly not missing an opportunity to take the p1ss out of Watches and Wonders either!):
What could this be? Well, there are some other ads floating around, and I have these two courtesy of our friend Johnny Davis at Esquire:
What’s interesting is that if you check out the SISTEM51 website, you will see the image in pink (above) matches a component on the Swatch website (circled in red):
So part 1 is solved… this will be a mechanical S51 watch. Now onto the theme - and for this, check this out:
If you look at the straps from the homepage teaser, the colours seem to line up with these characters (light blue & white = Alice, light & dark pink = Cheshire Cat, light & dark green = Mad Hatter, dark blue = Caterpillar, black could be anything really!).
Coupled with the “Wonders” text on the homepage, my prediction is that they’re launching a SISTEM51-powered Disney collaboration with an Alice in Wonderland theme. Bear in mind, Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland was released in 1951 - which makes 2026 the movie’s 75th anniversary. Perhaps Swatch has found a way to celebrate?
Or maybe I’m just delusional… I mean, it’s fair to wonder (lol!) whether Swatch would spend so much to advertise a Disney collab… I guess we will find out on May 16th!
Admin note: We asked the Unofficial Editor to check this draft, but he’s currently lost in Wonderland and thinks our grammar is just Tweedle-dumb... Please tap the title of this post or click here to ensure you read the most recent edition, which may include corrections made after publishing.
If you’re new to SDC, welcome! When you have some time, check out prior editions of SDC Weekly here, or find enlightenment in the archive here.
Estimated reading time: ~20 mins