Oris & Carl Brashear: a grand watch collab since 2016

Oris and the Carl Brashear Foundation have collaborated on three highly collectible limited-edition watches

Since 2016, Swiss luxury watch-manufacturers Oris have released several timepieces to commemorate the exceptional life of Carl Brashear, the U.S. Navy’s first African-American master diver. To date, there have been three watch collaborations celebrating Brashear’s legacy. The first of these collectible watches arrived in 2016, and featured a bronze-cased, “time-only” minimalistic version of Oris’ Divers Sixty-Five model.

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The watch featured a weathered 42mm case size, with an aptly-colored navy dial within it. This watch came with an in-house Oris 733 automatic winding date movement. To complete it was a white-stitched brown leather strap and special luxury wooden presentation box.

The next time Oris collaborated with the Carl Brashear Foundation to produce another watch was two years later in 2018. This edition was instead cast in bronze, and was based off the bigger and more feature-packed Oris Divers Sixty-Five Chronograph. It’s larger 43mm casing featured a navy two-counter dial and Oris 771 automatic winding chronograph system. As a contrast to the 2016 model, the pecan-brown leather strap that came with the watch featured a sueded texture and minimal stitching. Like the 2016 model, this watch came in a special luxury wooden box and was limited to just 2,000 pieces.

Now in 2021, we have reached the third limited-edition timepiece of the Oris x Carl Brashear series. More nautical in nature, its design was chosen to represent Carl’s diving equipment and success as a master diver in the face of social adversity. Like its predecessors, it features a bronze casing with navy dial. The number of sub-dials from the 2018 iteration has been reduced to a solitary and centrally placed day counter at the six o’clock section of the watch. This reduction also applies to the smaller 40mm case size, offering a less cluttered yet just-as-intricate dial profile. Housed within the watch is an Oris 401 automatic winding small second movement. Opting for a more ecological approach, Oris forgoes with the leather strap and instead utilizes a matching navy with bronze-striped NATO strap to keep the watch together. Standout highlights of the 2021 Oris x Carl Brashear edition include a highly anti-magnetic movement, five-day power reserve, and ten-year warranty.