Swatch, Audemars Piguet Unveil Royal Pop Pocket Watches Early

Swatch and luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet revealed their highly anticipated Royal Pop collection on Tuesday, ahead of the originally planned May 16 launch, after a surge of AI-generated fake images flooded social media following the collaboration's announcement on May 8.

The collection consists of eight bioceramic pocket watches that blend design elements from Audemars Piguet's iconic Royal Oak, introduced in 1972, and Swatch's colorful POP watches from the 1980s. Each model is named after a variation of the word "eight" in languages including French (Huit Blanc), Italian (Otto Rosso), Japanese (Orenji Hachi) and Swiss Romansh (Otg Roz), nodding to the Royal Oak's octagonal bezel secured by eight screws.

Available in two configurations, the Lépine style features a crown at 12 o'clock and retails for 400 euros, while the Savonnette version has a crown at 3 o'clock with a small seconds subdial at 6 o'clock and costs 420 euros. Measuring 40mm in diameter and 8.4mm thick, the watches clip into a bioceramic holder, expanding to 44.2mm by 53.2mm. They are powered by a hand-wound version of Swatch's Sistem51 movement, offering more than 90 hours of power reserve, an anti-magnetic...