Vintage brands: When watchmakers turn back time

The watch industry’s - and the watch buyers’ - fascination with the past appears to be perennial. But, of late, it is not just vintage models that are being issued - entire brands are being resurrected every year. Here, we take a look at three reborn brands and their debut offerings.

Aquastar Deepstar

In the early 1960s, Frederic Robert, a diver, sailor, and, among other things, a mathematician and watchmaker, inherited a watch company named Jean Richard and turned it to Aquastar, which was focused on making professional grade watches and instruments - such as sailing timers and depth gauges - for the diving community.

Within ten years, the Geneva-based Aquastar was awarded a bunch of patents for its models, including for an inner rotating bezel, dive decompression bezel, and crown sealing system.

An old Aquastar advertisement read: ‘Aquastar makes nothing but sea watches and instruments. You might call us the “underwater watch company”.'

The famous French undersea explorer, documentary host and co-inventor of the breathe-on-demand valve for scuba diving, often wore an Aquastar, and it was a well-regarded brand. But Aquastar’s appeal mostly remained restricted to the diving community, and the quartz crisis of the 1980s flattened it.

Late last year, Rick Marei, who worked on Doxa’s SUB range of watches, pulled the brand out of the murky depths and relaunched it. The resurrected Aquastar’s first product is the Deepstar, which closely follows the aesthetics of the original, an iconic diving chronograph, and sports a slick mono sub counter dial, running indicator, and the patented multiple dive decompression scales.

The 40.5mm watch is powered by a La Joux Perret caliber, column wheel-equipped mechanical chronograph movement, and has a power reserve of 55 hours.

At $3,590, the Deepstar, which has both heritage and style, provides an interesting - and relatively affordable - alternative to chronographs from the likes of Doxa and Longines, and, not surprisingly, the watch, 1,200 of which were made, is almost sold out.

Timor Heritage Field

If you are into combat watches, you’ll love the Timor Heritage Field, which is “inspired by WWII British military watches, but Swiss-made”. The story goes back to 1945 when 12 manufacturers supplied the British military with the W.W.W (Wrist Watch Waterproof) watch. On the list along with Omega, Longines, and IWC was Timor.

Revived in 2019, the brand recently launched the crowdfunded Heritage Field. The 36.5mm watch sports a bead-blasted stainless steel case that houses a Sellita movement (a hand-wound calibre like in the original, or an automatic). The dial delivers great legibility; the sword hands are lume-tipped, and right below the Timor logo is the Broad Arrow symbol, as in the original W.W.W watch which identified it as British military property. The Heritage Field costs 910 pounds and will ship later this year.

Nivada Chronomaster Aviator Sea Diver

Once known for its stylish chronographs, Nivada, based in Grenchen, in Switzerland - and among the first companies to make automatic watches -floundered under the onslaught of quartz-powered Japanese watches during the 1980s.

The recently revived brand offers three models, all of which, quite naturally, are tributes to stars in its former line-up. These include the Antarctic, Depthmaster, and the Chronomaster, which is a particularly fetching timepiece. Available in 12 variations and fitted with either a manually wound movement or an automatic, the 38mm Chronomaster range starts at about $1,730.