Heritage Brand Favre Leuba Returns With New Collection Featuring 22 New Models In Five Families

If you’re a student of vintage watch brands with a long history as well as a history of producing interesting and useful complications, you have probably heard of Favre Leuba, and you might even remember that the company, whose history goes all the way back to 1737, when watchmaker Abraham Favre opened a workshop in Le Locle. The company became Favre Leuba in 1815 when Auguste Leuba joined, and the company’s pocket watches began appearing in the second half of the 19th century, at international exhibitions in London, New York, and Paris. In the 20th century, Favre Leuba’s wristwatch production expanded dramatically and came to include technical models such as the Bivouac, which was a wristwatch with altimeter, and the Bathy, which included a depth gauge – if you’ve heard of the brand before, chances are those are the models you’ve heard of.

The Quartz Crisis led the family to sell the company in the 1980s, but in 2011, the brand was acquired by the Titan company, a subsidiary of the Tata Group. (The brand has a long history in India, having entered the market in 1865). Although the brand released a number of models – including a new version of its famous altimeter watch, the Bivouac – which generated considerable interest, the relaunch failed to find a wider audience, and ceased releasing new models in 2020.

Favre Leuba is now owned by Grenchen-based Silvercity Brands (which in turned is owned by India-based Ethos) and has returned to the market with a full-fledged collection consisting of 22 new models, across five product families featuring both contemporary and vintage inspired designs.

The new collections are the Deep Blue Revival and Deep Blue Renaissance diver’s watches, which are water resistant to 300M; the Sea Sky Chronographs, which take their design cues from the 1970s and are 100M water resistant chronographs; and the Chief Chronograph and Chief Date models, which are the most contemporary in the collection, with integrated stainless steel bracelets. All the new models use movements from La Joux Perret – the caliber G100 for the time and date models, and the chronograph L112 for the chronographs.

Deep Blue Revival And Deep Blue Renaissance

The Deep Blue Revival is, as the name suggests, a revival of a vintage Favre Leuba dive watch model originally launched in 1964 – the Deep Blue was a diver’s watch, 200M water resistant, with a bakelite timing bezel and acrylic crystal. The new Revival version is quite faithful to the original in appearance, coming in at 39mm x 12.75mm in a stainless steel case, with a sapphire box crystal and sapphire bezel insert.

The Deep Blue Revival is powered by a La Joux Perret automatic caliber G100, and at launch there will be one model, with a black sunray brushed dial and ecru vintage-style lume. Price is CHF 2250.

The Deep Blue Renaissance is the more modern version of the original, with a slightly larger case at 40mm x 12.75mm, and with either a sunray brushed green or blue dial. The movement is the LJP G100, water resistance is 300M and the watch has a sapphire box crystal and sapphire bezel insert. The dial is a sandwich lume dial, and prices at launch are CHF 2200 on a strap, or CHF 2300 on a bracelet; the Renaissance model has a display back.

Both watches look and feel like very well made, sturdy, premium quality products and I think right out of the gate, they’re very convincing entrants into what’s a very crowded market segment; diver’s watches always run the risk of suffering from me-too design features, but these stand out from the crowd – both in terms of specs and in terms of design, with attention to detail evident in the sector-dial-like extended lume plots at the quarters, and the echo of the round logo in the round 4:30 date window.

Sea Sky Chronographs

The Sea Sky Chronographs are vintage inspired three register chronographs, powered by the La Joux Perret caliber L112, which is an automatic column wheel caliber with a 60 hour power reserve. The Sea Sky’s stainless steel case is 40mm x 15.23mm, with a domed sapphire crystal and sapphire crystal display back.

Water resistance is 100M and the watch has an inner telemetric scale, and a unidirectional timing bezel. The telemetric scale is an interesting choice – a telemeter scale allows you to measure how far away a visual event with an audible component is from your location. The classic example is a lighting bolt – when you see the flash of lightning, start the chronograph, and stop it when you hear the thunder; you can then read off the approximate distance from the telemeter scale. Another example is the distance to the flash of a falling artillery shell, which one hopes will be irrelevant to most owners. Practically speaking, in the thunderstorm example, successive measurements can tell you whether a storm is approaching or not.

The Sea Sky also has elongated hash marks on the chronograph minutes counter at 3,6, and 9 minutes; this is a feature seen on many vintage chronographs. Surprisingly enough, despite the ubiquity of this feature, no one seems to know exactly what purpose those markers were intended to serve, although one frequently mentioned theory is that they’re there to allow you to time payphone calls.

The Sea Sky, at 100M water resistant and with a unidirectional timing bezel, does fit the requirements for a diver’s watch as specified by ISO 6425, although most owners will probably hesitate to use it as a primary dive watch. Sea Sky chronographs at launch come with black, blue, or brown dials; price is CHF 3950.

Chief Chronograph And Chief Date

The Chief Date and Chief Chronograph models are the most contemporary of Favre Leuba’s offerings, although even here, there’s some inspiration from vintage models, particularly in the cushion cases, which echo some of the trends found in wristwatch design in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The stainless steel case is 41mm x 14mm, with sapphire crystals front and back and the movement once again is the La Joux-Perret caliber L112. Water resistance is 100M, and at launch the Chief Chronograph is CHF 4300 on a strap, or CHF 4375 on the double fold clasp stainless steel bracelet. At launch, the Chief Chronograph will be available with sunray brushed black, blue, or ice-blue dials.

The Chief Date watches are straightforward time and date timepieces, with the same faceted cushion style case as the Chief Chronograph. The movement is the La Joux-Perret caliber G100, and the stainless steel case is 40mm x 10.81mm, and 100M water resistant. One notable feature of the Chief Date design is the dial, which is textured with a pattern of Favre Leuba hourglasses; available colors are black, green, or blue, and prices at launch are CHF 2300 on a strap, or CHF 2375 on the H-link integrated stainless steel bracelet.

Favre-Leuba  has ambitious plans; the company will produce about 4,000 watches at the outset and hopes to eventually ramp up production to 100,000 watches a year, with pricing remaining in the accessible price range established by its opening collection. The biggest challenge Favre Leuba will face in the US market is probably education – the brand is well known in some markets (including Europe, and India, which has historically been one of the brand’s most important markets) but less so in others, and in the US market, the brand and some of its historical production (like the altimeter Bivouac) may be well known among enthusiasts, but much less well known among the larger pool of possible clients.

Favre Leuba has enormous potential, though – it has a long, very rich history, and a history also of making the sort of rugged, g0-anywhere-do-anything watches which have so much broad appeal; the brand has a deep back catalog of designs to draw from as well and in its vintage inspired new timepieces, it’s show just how well it can use those design cues. Fingers crossed for a Bivouac in the not too distant future.

For more info, visit FavreLeuba.com.