Oris has been a steady fan favorite in the modern era, with much of recent attention stemming from its 2015 release of the Diver Sixty-Five. This watch, based on a 1965 dive watch by the brand, accomplished something few other vintage-inspired pieces have been able to do: be better than the original. To its benefit, the brand had history on its side; for the most part, vintage Oris watches have been deemed by the market as less-than-timeless, so the balancing act other brands face ? channeling for the contemporary market a beautiful, historical model while changing enough not to make it an exact replica ? was tossed out the window. Oris doesn?t need to balance its designs or re-create some mythic past down to the lug; it simply needs to keep creating, enjoying the modern renaissance with vintage-inspired designs, and producing affordable, crowd-favorite watches all the while.
With this said, the brand has kept creating, and in the wake of the Diver Sixty-Five has been steadily releasing new vintage-inspired pieces each year. In 2017, one of these watches was the ChronOris Date (below), a fascinating piece based on a 1970 stop-seconds chronograph with a similar name (it was simply the ChronOris, vintage model pictured above). The vintage piece was the very first chronograph produced by the brand all those years ago, with a design that could not have been born in any time but the 1970s. With a tonneau (?tortoise shell?) case, orange, white, and black accents, rotating inner ...