Swatch’s New “Break Free” Watches Celebrate Keith Haring’s Artwork

Four decades ago, the folks at Swatch decided to host the first-ever World Breakdance Championship. This was no small thing for a Swiss watch brand, especially one that was founded just a year beforehand, in 1983. But unlike many makers from the cradle of high horology, Swatch didn’t have decades or centuries of history informing the way it did business. Instead, the new company was focused on innovation and breaking through to a new audience, while the impact of the quartz crisis—in which traditional mechanical makers were shaken to their core by the sudden and ubiquitous availability of inexpensive, quartz-driven models—was still reverberating throughout the watch world. Read more at Esquire.