TAG Heuer’s Iconic 80s Formula 1 Watch Is Reborn
It’s time for retro-plastic watch mania again—or, at least, it is if you’re based in one of just seven cities worldwide, or are prepared to move very fast online.
Dropping next week is the reborn TAG Heuer Formula 1, the buoyantly colorful, plastic-cased sports watch that revitalized the Swiss maker in the 1980s, and has become a collector favorite in recent years.
Those original F1s sold in their millions, but this revival is geared specifically to the modern hype-world fetishes of collectability, rarity and collabs. In a partnership with the hipster-approved fashion/lifestyle brand Kith, just under 5,000 watches will be available in total, spread across 10 hard-to-get limited editions. Seven of these will only be available from Kith’s boutiques (five in North America, one in Japan and one in France) and website. The entire collection will be displayed in the two brands’ Miami stores from Thursday, and go on sale on Monday.
This, of course, follows the major frenzy—and certifiable cultural moment—created by Swatch two years ago with its bioplastic MoonSwatch tie-up with Omega (the latest, Snoopy-adorned version of which dropped just last month). Since then, the possibility of TAG Heuer following suit with its own famously colorful plastic favorite has been keenly anticipated.
After all, the Formula 1, which appeared in 1986, was in some ways seen as the brand’s answer (though of a notably higher spec) to the original Swatch, the cheap, plastic, battery-powered timepiece that had revolutionized the market three years earlier.
The Swatch’s soaraway success helped pave the way for Switzerland’s return as a watchmaking superpower, after a decade-long pummeling by cut-price Japanese watches and economic shocks. Heuer, as it was then known, had been one of the major victims of that crisis: once a family-owned specialist in chronographs associated with the glamorous world of motor sports and Grand Prix racing, it was near bankruptcy when it was sold to Piaget, another Swiss firm, in 1982.
