Introducing the 60th Anniversary Edition Squale 30 Atmos

Squale, the Swiss dive watch specialist with the Italian name, turns 60 this year, and to celebrate the brand is releasing a very special edition of their much loved 30 Atmos dive watch, and it’s limited to just 150 pieces. With plenty of vintage touches, this release is likely to be a favorite among Squale’s dedicated and vocal base of fans. Let’s take a closer look at how Squale is marking their diamond anniversary.

Squale 60th Anniversary 30 Atmos

• Case Material: Stainless steel
• Dial: Black, 
• Dimensions: 40.8mm x 12mm
• Crystal: Sapphire 
• Water Resistance: 300 meters
• Crown: Screw down
• Movement: Sellita SW 200
• Strap/Bracelet: Sail cloth two-piece
• Price: 1,190 CHF, which is roughly $1,218 USD
• Expected Release: September 1, 2019

The case of the 60th anniversary edition of the 30 Atmos will be familiar to fans of the brand. Squale’s cases tend to have a combination of easily flowing lines and sharp, well-defined elements that give it a tough but elegant look. In profile, the 30 Atmos is sleek, and you can easily imagine this being a solid one-watch decision for vacations, being both ultra waterproof and on the dressier side of sporty. At a hair over 40 millimeters in diameter and just over 12 millimeters thick — and those dimensions coupled with a profile that most certainly isn’t a giant slab — this watch isn’t particularly chunky and should wear easily on wrists of all sizes. 

From the top down, the 30 Atmos bears a striking resemblance to famous vintage Blancpain dive watches, some of which utilized Squale cases. With the spare design of the rotating bezel and combination of Arabic numerals and simple rectangular indices, the visual quoting is unmistakable. Squale, in the early days of the brand and through the 1980s, was well known for providing high-quality cases to many of the big Swiss luxury brands, including Blancpain, well before it was “in-house” or nothing. Parts sharing in the ’60s and ’70s was practical and common, and it helped to ensure quality as well, since Squale (and EPSA) were known to produce reliable and extremely well-made cases engineered specifically for diving. This release is somewhat of a throwback to Squale’s roots as a supplier for others, and I admire how they take pride in that in an age where nothing is prized more than a brand’s vertical integration.  

The dial features Squale’s iconic shark logo at 6:00, as well as some text in a script font that calls out the date of the 60th anniversary. Everything you see on the dial looks old in a good way. The chosen font is the antithesis of modern, and naturally the luminescent material is a “vintage” shade as well. For a watch that so explicitly pays tribute to a brand’s history, I think the chosen lume shade is more than appropriate.

Anniversary watches can be hit or miss. Sometimes the straight-up copy strategy backfires if the design isn’t perfect, and if a brand goes for a reinterpretation of an older piece, things can fall apart in the execution of the modern mixed with the old. What Squale has done here is interesting, because they’ve used an iconic design most closely associated with another brand and asked us to consider how that folds in to their own unique history. The design, in the end, is as old-fashioned as Squale’s business itself, which I think in 2019 makes a really interesting point.

This watch is slated for release September 1, 2019 and will be priced at 1,190 CHF, which is roughly $1,218 USD.  Squale