Water world
Women aren’t treated to many top class diving watches but there are options if you know where to look
There are regular grumblings on this page about the sexism that continues to hang around the watch industry with all the charm of a fake gold Daytona at the Rolex factory. Things are getting better but there is too often that feeling of “could do more”. One area where this is the case is diver’s watches. The advent of the glorious weather and the prospect of an impending summer holiday made me start thinking about women’s divers and the lack thereof.
My other half’s helpful comment on the matter was women don’t really dive or if they do they wear a man’s watch. You can imagine my response to that.
While I’m all for wearing men’s watches – I rarely wear anything else – I still feel there should be something out there for those women who want neither a great behemoth of a thing on their wrist nor a shrunken version of a man’s watch.
Thankfully, if you do a bit of digging there are options out there. The perennial classic is the TAG Heuer Aquaracer. Launched in the 1980s and famously snapped on the wrist of Bo Derek wearing little else, this watch was specifically designed to be a woman’s aquatic watch. It is water resistant to 300m, has the classic diver design codes of a unidirectional bezel, screwed-down crown and luminescent hands, and current ambassador Cameron Diaz has actually used hers for diving. Just as importantly, it looks good both in and out of water and there is an automatic version, too.
If you can’t bear to ditch the diamonds when you don a wetsuit, Omega’s Seamaster has a model with a unidirectional rotating bezel that’s set with stones and there are diamond-set indices as well. It is quartz, however: if you have your heart set on an automatic, you’re essentially left with a smaller version of the men’s Seamaster.
For those who don’t want something too overtly feminine, MontBlanc has an elegant solution in its Sport Lady. Its white dial and rubber strap gives it a “ready for action” look. The only slight minus is that it does prioritise the use of diamonds over having an automatic movement, and is slightly less water resistant than the Aquaracer – 200m as opposed to 300m – but it does share all its other main attributes; you can dive with it, which is what you’re wearing it for in the first place.
However, if you can’t face forking out for a watch that probably costs more than your diving holiday, you could just go and pick up one of Swatch’s Scuba Libres. It comes in a host of colours and, thanks to its sub-£100 price tag, is the perfect watch to take away with you. And, of course, it also comes in pink.