Dive! Dive! Dive!
An iconic timepiece celebrates 70 years at sea
Dive watches remain the number-one bestselling style for men, though it can be hard to fathom why.
It’s unlikely you’ve ever met anyone who’s used one to go diving. Professionals have relied on computers and decompression meters for the last 40 years and virtually any watch released today — including the Apple Watch — is waterproof to at least 10 metres, which is plenty for any non-advanced scuba activity.
Yet the classic diver style endures: rugged, outsized and usually equipped with a unidirectional bezel (the clicky outer ring designed to record time spent underwater). The fact is, dive watches look cool. They feel authentic, signal a certain active lifestyle and look solidly made and tough, usually because they are. (The appeal of being able to fiddle with the clicky outer ring shouldn’t be understated, either.)
Although Rolex had already made watches waterproof with its Oyster case in the 1920s and Cartier had released its waterproof Tank Étanche model in 1931, we can take 1953 as Year Zero for dive watches as we recognise them today. That was when the hip new scuba craze was bubbling up and the watch brands wanted in: Rolex released its Submariner and Blancpain launched its Fifty Fathoms in that year.
Both models featured black dials, luminescent hour numerals and a rotating bezel calibrated at five-minute increments. Yet despite being commissioned by actual French naval officers, being named for the maximum depth you could reach using standard scuba gear in the 1950s, and arriving with the ringing endorsement of Jacques Cousteau, the Fifty Fathoms made a smaller splash, certainly against the might of its Swiss neighbour. Which is unjust, because it’s an equally wonderful watch.
To mark its 70th anniversary, 2023 sees a wave of Fifty Fathoms-related activity to remind us why. A series of three limited editions is planned through the year. First up: the Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary Act 1. The new model features a 42mm case size, which is new to the brand’s contemporary catalogue but matches the 1950s original. The hour numerals and indices are no longer metallically framed but come instead in a solid block of luminous material so they stand out from the dial. There’s an anniversary inscription on the winding rotor visible through the back of the case, appropriately made from platinum, and “70th Anniversary Series I” inscribed on the front. Seventy watches will be released per region (“Series I” being Europe), 210 in total.
The Nato strap is entirely made from recycled thread from fishing nets recovered from the sea — Blancpain’s “Ocean Commitment” programme of preservation was well ahead of the wave of sustainability that’s swept the watch biz, when it launched back in 2014.
Perhaps most significantly, the Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary Act 1 keeps the design code that has endured for seven decades almost entirely intact. It’s a high-water mark for the category and a robust answer to anyone still wondering — what makes dive watches so popular?
○ £15,200; blancpain.com