This week, at their annual press event in Vail, CO, Oris unveiled the latest edition of the Divers Sixty-Five, the Divers Sixty-Five 60th Anniversary Edition. While some have met the news of yet another trip to the Divers Sixty Five well with some confusion or bemusement considering the big launch of its natural successor, the Divers Date, last year, the writing was on the wall that this was coming. I mean, it’s right there in the name of the watch, and the arithmetic is easy. Nobody misses a chance to celebrate an anniversary in this industry, and the Divers Sixty-Five is more than worthy of the treatment.
Before we get into the specifics of the new model, which we’re told is the true swan song for the Divers Sixty-Five, I think it’s worth stepping back and looking at the origins of the Sixty-Five and what makes it a genuinely important watch in the realm of enthusiast focused divers. While the original Divers Sixty-Five did indeed debut 60 years ago, the modern revival version has had a much more widespread impact. Oris brought the Sixty-Five back about ten years ago in a watch climate that was really beginning to see vintage inspired watches, particularly midcentury sports watches and divers, gain traction. The timing was perfect, and for new enthusiasts entering the hobby in those heady days, the Divers Sixty-Five was an easy recommendation on forums (remember those?) if a new collector wasn’t quite ready to spend Tudor money. The Sixty-Five not only offered incredible value (and enthusiast street cred – Oris was, and still is to an extent, considered an insider’s brand) it had a funky style that set it apart from the more sober watches it was competing with. Those highly stylized numerals really stood out, and with the inspiration for this watch coming from an old-fashioned skin diver, it was also always an incredibly easy wear, and a bit less intense and more casual than some of the more professional oriented dive watches of the time.
Over the last decade, Oris has iterated endlessly on the Divers Sixty-Five, making it a canvas for limited editions in a range of styles, experimenting with different case sizes and metals, and standardizing the dial design into something that looked more like a Submariner (or any generic vintage diver) than the Sixty-Five we first became acquainted with. This was always something I felt a little wistful about. Those early Divers Sixty-Fives with the blocky, angular numerals were original and cool – it seemed a shame that they eventually put that style to bed in favor of straightforward applied and lume filled hour markers. Well, if you’re like me and always enjoyed that design, you’ll be pleased with this anniversary edition, which leans into those style cues and adds some additional vintage inspired details as well.
At first glance, this feels very much a throwback to the relaunched DIvers Sixty-Five of ten years ago, and it is, to a point. Those numerals are back at the 12, 3, 6, and 9, this time in a yellowy beige that suggests tropical patina that you might see on a vintage dive watch. But there are a bunch of inside-baseball choices here that tie this watch directly to the original 1965 version. Among them, an old-school version of the “Oris” wordmark with “waterproof” text printed underneath it, a detail Oris says has been revived for the first time in the brand’s contemporary history. We also get anti-shock labeling near 6:00 as well as shorter indices, both very subtle details that evoke the vintage references that were the inspiration for this piece. The thinking here seems to be that for the final Divers Sixty-Five, Oris would get as close as they could to the first examples, which feels like a fitting way to end the series.
If there’s a gripe to be had with this release, it’s that it comes in the familiar 40mm case size. This is the case diameter that the Divers Sixty-Five reissue debuted with in 2015, but in the ensuing years Oris has developed a 38mm Divers Sixty-Five case that has become something of a consensus favorite among enthusiasts. There’s even a now discontinued 36mm version of the Divers Sixty-Five, and I think either of those options would have been a nice fit with the anniversary vibe of this watch, which exists as a tribute as much as anything else. That said, 40mm is far from unwearable, and at 12.8mm thick it’s very nicely proportioned.
The new Divers Sixty-Five 60th Anniversary Edition is available now, at a retail price of $2,500. Oris