Street
Art On The Smallest Canvas Club
Watch Launch Event 2009
02-APR-2009, Paris, France
On 2-APR-2009, the new Club watch Street
Club (SUJZ111) was launched during a Swatch The Club
event in Paris with a street art exhibition and exclusive DJ
party with the designer of the watch: Urban Artist and HipHop
musician GREMS.
Before we met in the early afternoon at the hotel, I made a short visit
(my first one!) to the exclusive Vendôme
store. The interior of the store is still very nice but
unfortunately, it no longer features only watches from the
Vendôme collection but also normal ones. In fact, there are
only about 15 different Vendôme watches left at the store.
But at least, all the current (expensive!) models are available.
At 3pm, the bus took us to the Bastille
area of paris, and we had a short walk...
...to the Lazy
Dog art gallery and store where the exhibition and launch
would take place.
The three watches by GREMS decorated in the shop window
The art exhibition features nine unique
painted Maxi Swatches, all of them look really great. I am sure
that these Maxi Swatches (or a Maxi of the new Club Watch) would sell
well but they were not for sale unfortunately. They will be shown
at different places in the world in the future.
easter egg hunting?
Skander (head of Swatch The Club Intl.)
gave a short welcome speech and he introduced GREMS (on the right) to
the collectors.
Afterwards, the unique special collector
packaging (limited and numbered to 200 pcs!) was unveiled. The
box is violet instead of black and it has a different ref.no.:
SUJZ111-1.
I
just found a very interesting webpage
showing the preparation and painting of the maxi swatches.
In the basement of the gallery, some
artworks by GREMS were on display and these were also for sale.
cool! I am not sure if this was sold...
In the next two hours, GREMS patiently took the
time to sign, to paint, and to decorate his watches, the poster, and
lots of other stuff. He has very carefully designed the watches,
the POS material, posters, wrist bands for the VIP parts, and many many
other goodies necessary for launching and marketing his three Swatches.
Here is a nice video with a lots of
impressions from the gallery:
It took a looooong time until the paint was dry...
...a very special artwork for Henk who was still on the road at that
time!
Later in the afternoon, we went to the Swatch Megastore
on the Champs-Elysées where a reception for the collectors was
held and a few more pieces of the collectors packaging were available.
In the evening, we had a very good dinner
at the Sans Sanz restaurant. We
were a littly hungry and the French take a loong time for the different
courses, so that's maybe the reason why the excitement on the picture
below is not at the highest level apparently...
Afterwards we went to the launch party at
the La Scène Bastille club
where a VIP room for the collectors was reserved.
Apparently, the music was not too exciting for everybody (including
myself :-)
empty dancefloor (but it was more crowded later)
So we left the party at around midnight as
the music (hard electronic beats) was not exactly our taste,
unfortunately. But overall, it was a great launch event, it was
very interesting to get a sneak peek into the french artist
scene! Unfortunately, the event was much too short :-/
The next day, I had a little extra time in
Paris for shopping and sight seeing and I discovered another artwork by
GREMS at the entrance of a metro station: A huge poster for the Paris
Marathon which took place on 5-APR.
