I spent last week in Geneva, during which four days of torrential rain gave me time to think about some issues. Of course, given its location, a lot of the things that come to mind have to do with watches and watchmaking, and I can’t help but wonder why diving watches, in general, seem to be as popular as regular watch replica.
Apparently, the answer is that they are as a rule, much more durable and dependable than non-dive watches but the more I thought about it, the less clear it seemed to me that they are as a class better in a general sense for daily life away from actual diving, than other watches might be.
In fact, after thinking about it for a long time, I think diving watch is not just a very niche watch, but a very special application. For a watch to be, so to speak, officially a dive watch, it must adhere to some fairly particular requirements, which are spelled out in the ISO 6425 standard. The fact that the organization has so many members, and that consensus is nearly universal on its utility, means that time pieces that can be called dive fake watches share to a remarkable degree, the same basic features.
The standard requires the ability to pass so many tests, including a battery of water resistance tests, and diver’s watches must also possess certain design features, including the ability to be read in total darkness at a distance of 25 centimeters, and of course, they must possess a unidirectional timing bezel – this has been a necessary feature of true diver’s watches going all the way back to the early 1950s, when the replica Rolex Submariner and Blancpain Fifty Fathoms debuted.
For those who don’t touch watches often, many watches seem almost indistinguishable and hard to tell at a glance. Of course, they offer a relatively narrow range of choices in terms of personal expression of taste.
The design homogeneity of diver’s watches often seems to provoke brands to exert themselves, to find ways to design a dive watch which looks different enough from other offerings to attract attention as a unique effort, but this is a very tricky thing to pull off. Diving watches or does not work, in its most basic level, on the function is successful, although you may want to make you look different from the other manufacturers have a very sharp point of diminishing returns — you can’t dress up very diving watches before starting to look like a illustration of diving watches, instead of diving watches.
The truth is, dive fake watches don’t usually go with anything more formal than polo shirts and khakis. They can vary from person to person or watch to slightly incongruous to completely unsuitable for business attire, and as for semi-formal or formal attire, I wouldn’t do that.