doxa was once a manufacturer of big, heavy and serious SCUBA tools. The brand now also produces thin, colorful, diamond-set watches with mother-of-pearl dials. These brand new models come in a variety of colors and are priced at $9,400.

We published a story about this just yesterday. What might be the case with Universal Genève? is now being revived. Such brand revivals are fraught with pitfalls. Doxa watches were brought back in the 2000s under the supervision of collectors. Rick MaraiStay strictly true to the original designs, which created the template for how to revive a legendary watch brand without breaking its bones. Understand the facts clearly. Tell great stories. Engage with the collector community firsthand. Describe passionate fans like James Lamdin And Jason Heatonand let them spread the gospel.

The Jenny family, who licensed Doxa’s IP to Marai in 2019, cut ties with the man and began a series of moves that confused the small, passionate Doxa community. That year the company was Solid gold version of the Doxa Chronograph diver this cost over $70,000. No one seems to have purchased one or even seen one in the wild. My collector friends suspected it was melted down, but who knows. Whatever happened to these solid gold watches, the Doxa community generally objected to this literal and figurative change of tone. As one collector told me at the time, that gold watch showed that the brand had become “tone deaf.”

There was no point in this watch because Doxa has always been a tool watch company and can be argued to have established the first trademark. diving watch from scratch. (Dive watches were by then adaptations of earlier models.) Working from scratch led to a strange case shape that resembled a flying saucer, a legible dial that now resembles Bauhaus markers and hands but was considered simply legible at the time, and—which is patented to this day. The model is a dual-scale timing framework that uses the US Navy’s SCUBA standard to calculate decompression stops while ascending.

I used the famous Doxa SUB 300 to time my decompression stops while diving and it works great. This is because the Doxa SUB is a tool watch; It was designed that way, used that way, and eventually reintroduced that way. Jacques Cousteau He famously endorsed the SUB 300, wearing it in many movies and even releasing versions with his own dive equipment company, Aqualung.

Under Jenny’s leadership, Doxa has made strides into other areas of the watch market that are arguably more profitable than serving a group of geeky people nostalgic for the glory days of analog SCUBA diving. Of course, Doxa upset this community a bit in the process, and that was inevitable – sales and all.

It can be easy for the collecting community to express dismay when a watch company “goes sideways, does things it’s never done before, and defies anything resembling logic. In fact, replacing the world’s most innovative, useful, and still patented diving bezel with a bunch of jewels that would render the watch useless is one thing.” Seems like some bastardization, it’s easy for some die-hard adventurers to conclude that Doxa really messed up.

But let’s take a second and remember this Rolex—maker of the most iconic, cool, advanced, rugged and masculine dive watches SubmarineDeepsea and Sea-Dweller – have long adorned dive watches with a ridiculous amount of jewellery. In fact, Rolex was launching solid gold Submariner models with reference 1608/8 in 1969, when Doxa was gaining ground. So if we take an honest look at the analog era, when SCUBA diving was still dangerous and mechanical watches were cutting edge, we can see this: diamonds solid gold and all the jewels were already there, looking absolutely useless as a tool and completely ostentatious.

However, it’s safe to say that Doxa’s latest approach doesn’t fully honor its history as a serious tool watch manufacturer. Really It has also broken away from the history of diving watches. This is because dive watches have always also been a fashion statement. By the late 1990s, almost no amateur divers were using mechanical watches, so today the whole idea of ​​the mechanical dive watch is nostalgic exercise in postmodern irony.

Reviving a watch brand based on nostalgia and retro style doesn’t mean the company has to play only by the rules of the back catalogue. Actually Doxa published a Carbon fiber version of SUB 300 He had become a diver a few years ago and no one objected. Even some well-known fans of the brand were excited about the carbon model. This reaction to carbon, which bears zero resemblance to anything Doxa has made before, or anything from the 20th century, suggests that it may be this rejection of acceptance that is motivating the negative reactions to Doxa’s use of mother-of-pearl and diamonds in the smaller model. traditionally feminine tropes.

Since the SUB 200 is smaller than the 300, one could argue that Doxa has pulled the old “shrink and pink” move here. But die-hard dive watch lovers also seemed to like the smaller size; wasn’t girly. Sure, the pink mother-of-pearl dial and rows of useless diamonds might be considered girly, but it’s also pretty elegant, fun, luxurious, and totally in line with what Rolex has always done, but never taken anything for granted. I’m dying for this. And if you want, Doxa still makes the big, heavy dive gear.

To learn more, visit: doxa.