There should be no surprise that Longines released another attractive dive watch during Baselworld this year. After all, it was only two years ago that the vintage-inspired Legend Diver captivated social media and the horological blogosphere as a whole. Going even further back, the HydroConquest has had a steady presence in the brand’s catalog for over a decade. Despite those hits, it was still with some shock that my colleagues and I came across the Longines Heritage Skin Diver during this year’s fair. While the Longines Legend Diver was directly inspired by a line of watches from the 1960s, the new Heritage Skin Diver looks to take its design inspiration even further into the past ? to the late-1950s, to be exact.
An original ad featuring the 1958 Longines Skin Diver. Image courtesy of WatchProSite. There isn’t much information currently out there about this new timepiece but after going hands-on with it during the fair, we do have some details to share. As you can tell from the above ad, the design of this new watch is strikingly similar, with the ratcheted bezel, hands, and Arabic numerals all identical to its 1958 forebear. Even the winged hourglass logo underneath 12 o’clock and the cursive “Automatic” script above 6 o’clock appear to be indistinguishable from the original model.

What’s new, however, is the size of the watch and the movement inside. The Heritage Skin Diver hits that nice zone at 42 mm where the watch...