WATA Tokei’s signature style.

01

Vintage-inspired, unique design.

We understand the psychological difference between wearing a homage watch and an original design watch. Establishing our signature style with original designs that represent the brand’s philosophy was essential to start the brand.

Firstly, rather than the toughness and masculinity of tool watches commonly seen in diver’s watches, we aimed to create a versatile watch that has the graceful, elegant and dressy characteristics of a skin diver, and would look good in any situation, from weekends spent by the water to the office or a conference room.

Rather than using a specific famous model as a benchmark, we selected several models that fit the concept from the average skin divers of the countless brands that existed at the time. All of them were models from little-known brands that no longer exist.

The case size faithfully traces the dimensions of the original skindivers with unique improvements, while the dial and hands have a unique style that reflects Japanese aesthetics.

02

Japanese Aesthetic. Ultimate simplicity.

I thought that even without applied indexes or embossing, and with a simple print of luminous material and white ink, it would be possible to express a sophisticated beauty. Although I wasn’t aware of it during the design process, the result was a dial and hands that reflect Japanese aesthetics.

The domed dial’s smoothly curved surface has a wet luster reminiscent of Japanese lacquerware, and the hash marks that appear on it are delicate lines found on Maki-e.

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03

Staying true to the Original size.
16.5 ligne (37.2mm) and 16.25 ligne (36.7mm).

Since the 2010s, many microbrands have released watches themed skindivers. While I’m happy to see the skindiver genre gaining recognition and popularity with the revival of old brands and reissues of classic models, I feel unfortunate that most of them have been upsized to “modern sizes.”

As someone who has always preferred small-diameter dress watches, I came to understand after years of wearing skindiver watches on a daily basis.
I am convinced that the size is a key element that made the SkinDiver a stylish, all-purpose watch.

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In addition, we added a domed dial and bent hands as important elements of the WATA signature style. Some skin divers in the past followed the domed dial style that was often seen in dress watches from the 1950s, and had beautiful curved dials. However, at the time when hesalite crystals were mainstream, it was necessary to attach a tension ring to reinforce the crystal from the inside, and even if a large crystal was used, the dial exposure diameter was limited by the inner diameter of the tension ring. For example a skindiver with a 31.4 mm hesalite crystal, the dial opening diameter is approximately 28.3 mm.

Those classic skindivers had a large curved surface that covers the movement, but this tension ring prevents you from seeing the beautiful curved surface.The WATA Skindiver37 uses the latest sapphire crystal that makes the dial exposure diameter of 29.6 mm. The curve is kept gentle at the edge of the dial, and the curvature of the cross section is optimized to create a beautiful curve from the abbreviated characters to the numerals, pursuing the beauty of the luster.