Glashütte Original SeaQ In Red Gold
Glashütte Original has dressed up its retro SeaQ dive watch in stylish red gold and black, giving the rugged tool watch a new sporty-chic persona.
Since SeaQ launched in 2019, stainless steel iterations have been added, but this year the German brand upped its game with a shimmering red-gold case outfitted with a black scratchproof ceramic counter-clockwise rotating bezel and a galvanic black dial with a sunray finish. After dark, gold-plated hands, applied numerals and indexes light up with Super-LumiNova inlays for legibility at night (or underwater).
Despite its elegant new look, the 39.5-mm gold SeaQ ($22,300) still performs like a professional diver with water resistance down to 20 bar and a movement designed to take hard knocks. A power reserve of 100 hours and a silicon balance spring enhance precision and reliability. Not only does it meet stringent DIN and ISO standards for diver’s watches, it also undergoes the brand’s own elaborate multiphase testing. And for the first time in the collection, you can ire its mechanical beating heart—the automatic Calibre 39-11 movement—through a sapphire crystal case back.
The SeaQ is based on the 1969 Spezimatic Type RP TS200 dive watch produced by the brand’s Cold War ancestor, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB), a state-owned watchmaking conglomerate under the auspices of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
After World War II, the historic watchmaking center of Glashütte fell to the Soviets and the watchmaking firms there, including A. Lange & Söhne, were consolidated into GUB. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the town slowly rebuilt its legacy in producing fine watches that rival the best of Switzerland. Walter Lange, the great-grandson of Ferdinand Adolph Lange, who put Glashütte on the watchmaking map in the 19th century, returned to reclaim his family firm’s esteemed heritage. In 1994, Glashütte Original was established and other quality producers like Tutima, Nomos Glashütte and Moritz Grossmann followed suit.
While the SeaQ’s esthetics tap that popular vintage ’60s vibe, the robust watch is designed for today’s lifestyles with a choice of a black rubber strap or a gray synthetic fabric strap suited for your everyday adventures.
