Outside a handful of boutique-scale independent makers, contemporary watch design tends to play it safe, at least in comparison to the burst of creativity the industry witnessed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing from the same futuristic well of inspiration that gave us the Lava lamp (now celebrating its 60th anniversary) and Roger Vadim’s Barbarella, out-of-this-world Space Race watches appeared from designers ranging from Pierre Cardin to Andrew Grima.
In contrast to the stark, technological simplicity of the Apollo programme and ‘proper’ space watches such as Omega’s Nasa-qualified Speedmaster and the Rolex Cosmograph, these flamboyant watches drew from Barbarella’s luscious alternative vision, finding a sexy dimension in space that was a polar opposite of the pristine horror of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
