The Favre Leuba Deep Blue Revival, A Remake of a Historical Diver (incl. Video)

A long-established name in the watch industry, with a deep heritage in crafting some of the most impressive tool watches during the golden era of mechanical watchmaking, Favre Leuba ad to face ups and downs, with multiple owners. Recently, the brand has been revived with veteran industry leader Patrik Hoffmann at its head. Re-launched at the Geneva Watch Days 2024 with a brand new range of watches comprising 3 collections and no fewer than 22 references, we’re today taking a closer look at what could well be the brand’s star watch, a remake of a historical diver, the Favre Leuba Deep Blue Revival. 

Founded as an independent watch workshop in 1737 by Abraham Favre, Favre-Leuba is considered the second-oldest Swiss watch brand. The Favre-Leuba name would first appear in 1815 with the involvement of Auguste Leuba, part of an esteemed family of watchmakers and merchants. Favre-Leuba has a rich heritage of mechanical watchmaking. In the 1960s for instance, a period of tremendous success for the brand, it would introduce iconic watches such as the Bivouac, the Deep Blue and the Sea Sky. Under the guidance of industry veteran Patrick Hoffmann, Favre-Leuba is staging its grand return and we’ll be looking at one of the three new collections, and specifically the appealing vintage-oriented dive watch, the Deep Blue Revival.

The Favre Leuba Deep Blue takes us back to 1964, a time when dive watches became really popular. The 2024 Deep Blue collection is split into two lines; Revival and Renaissance. Renaissance means about 40% of the original design has been respected, while Revival pushes that to about 80%. In short, you have either a neo-vintage dive watch, or a rather faithful re-edition of this historical dive watch.  

Staying true to the brand’s roots, the Favre Leuba Deep Blue Revival takes its looks directly from the original watch introduced in 1964. It means that we’re looking at a pure retro-diver of 39mm in diameter and 12.75mm in height. The stainless steel is fully polished, with a curved profile and a unidirectional rotating bezel. The black insert has a lovely vintage font, with a luminous triangle at the top for a finishing touch. For the occasion of this return, the insert is now made of sapphire crystal, with its full 60-minute scale printed on the back. Another important update, while respecting the look of the original model, the dial is now protected by a sapphire crystal and the water-resistance has been increased from 200m to now 300m.

The dark grey dial of the Deep Blue Revival has a very fine sunray brushed finish, with an almost crosshair-like design, similar to the original Deep Blue reference 59603. At 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock, the elongated lines of beige Super-LumiNova are highlighted by polished double hour markers. At every other hour, there’s a shorter marker, also in beige Super-LumiNova. Time is indicated with a sword-shaped hour hand, arrow-tipped minute hand and arrow-tipped central seconds hand. All are finished with Super-LumiNova inserts, of course. The date window at 04:30 has a polished and bevelled outline. The final touches on the dial are the applied logo and white printed minute track and branding.

Hidden under the solid caseback is the automatic La Joux-Perret G100 movement, a powerful alternative to the ETA 2824 and Sellita SW200. This calibre runs at a frequency of 28,800vph and has a comfortable power reserve of 68 hours when fully wound.

The Favre-Leuba Deep Blue Revival comes on a fully polished stainless steel five-link bracelet with a double folding clasp. Despite the fact that it’s uniformly finished, the faceted profile of the links, with an original triangular shape, gives it quite some character. Overall it’s a very nice watch with a great size and a very appealing vintage design.

Soon available from the brand (late-Autumn 2024) and its retailers, the Favre Leuba Deep Blue Revival will be priced at a reasonable CHF 2,250. For more details, please consult www.favreleuba.com.