There are now myriad iterations, blessed with all manner of GPS and Bluetooth wizardry, but as always it’s the purest version that remains most faithful and, yes, the coolest.

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Longines Legend Diver

Full disclosure: the author wears one of these. And it’s the original no-date-window model first re-released in 2007, to boot, now long-discontinued. Which means, just by typing that, any hopeful cool factor has been rendered moot. Pay no mind, just get yourself the slightly unfaithful date version and rock the vintage reissue that kickstarted the whole vintage reissue craze in the first place.

The ‘patinated’ off-white numerals complement neutral tones beautifully and it’s still a bona fide sub-aqua instrument, with a crucial point of difference to the usual diver format: an internal rotating bezel, adjustable with the screwed-down crown at 2 o’clock.

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Swatch Twice Again

We’ve all owned one, but did you ever know your plucky Swatch watch is nothing less than the watch that, back in the eighties, saved the Swiss luxury watch industry from the onslaught of cheap Far Eastern quartz technology? Which is ironic of course, being that it is a cheap quartz watch.

It was invented almost by accident, when an engineer at Switzerland’s one-stop-shop for movements, ETA, recklessly spent 500,000 francs on an injection-moulding machine in the same year the firm had made 4,000 staff redundant. When his manager found out, he had just two hours to come up with a proposal: a cheap quartz watch that used ultrasonic welding to build the mechanism straight into the case. No screws, watertight, with just 51 parts, and little else to go wrong. Nothing has changed since in principal, and it’s still as fun but also discerningly democratic as it’s ever been.

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Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical

Before joining Switzerland’s vast Swatch Group as über-affordable cousin to stablemates Omega, Longines et al., Hamilton was one of America’s biggest watchmakers – making it the default choice for US infantry during World War II. This millimetre-perfect reissue is as faithful as it gets to its forties forebear, equipped with a historically correct manual-wind movement.