Blancpain Fifty Fathoms

The icon, and one of the most important dive watches ever made. Blancpain launched the Fifty Fathoms in 1953, developed with French combat divers, making it one of the very first purpose-built modern dive watches: unidirectional bezel, high water resistance, and anti-magnetic protection, the template nearly every diver since has followed. Today it runs in two tiers, the full-size 45mm Fifty Fathoms with its five-day in-house movement, and the smaller, more wearable Bathyscaphe. The 2023 70th anniversary brought special editions, and the Swatch x Blancpain 'Scuba Fifty Fathoms' collab that year put the design in front of a whole new audience. If you want the watch that helped define the category, this is it.