​​Guess what? Switzerland doesn’t have the monopoly for tasteful re-issues and neither do Airain nor Glashütte Original own the rights to making a particular type of skin diver—with a broad-arrow minute hand and large Arabic numerals for the even hours. The latter is a design many brands have claimed to have been the first one to make, but the truth is, no one brand can back this claim. This particular dial layout was one many brands used in the 1960s/70s just like many brands made similar looking field watches and mechanical chronographs. Some might see this time period as just another moment in the history of horology when many brands were micro/indie houses of watchmaking and got their watches manufactured in the same buildings in Switzerland or elsewhere. It’s just that those which survived the Quartz Revolution became independent watchmakers and their longevity is what made them earn the status of not being anything “micro” anymore. Think of what Rolex was at the turn of the 20th century. 

And many of us adore a good skin-diver as they were the symbol of relaxed summer holidays during which people snorkeled, dove, or cruised the white sand beaches of many tropical locations. Skin-divers came to be to offer a less-professional, less intimidating, and more affordable experience than hardcore dive watches so that people could also easily wear them back at their office to fight the post-summer-vacation depression by reminiscing of their recent aquatic adventures. Le Forban was there to answer the call as early as 1969 when it released the original (for the brand) Brestoise which ticked all of the boxes for a good-rounder skin-diver which can do more than people might think. As we saw in the review of the Marseillaise, the new Le Forban run by Jean-Sebastien Coste and Océane Jolivet is working its way through its iconic models and the Brestoise was one of the first two the team first re-released in 2019. The Brestoise is to me the perfect skin-diver which will set you back 490€/$572 USD.

Specifications 

You might already know all of this but if you don’t: the origin story of skin divers is that they were smaller and easier to wear versions of professional dive watches for the humans who didn’t need too much water resistance nor too bulky of cases. Their nickname comes from the fact that they were to be worn directly on the skin whilst snorkeling or shallow diving instead of over a wetsuit for more serious underwater explorations. They appeared somewhere in the 1950s and they typically offered 50 to 150 meters of water resistance which was deemed more than enough for such activities. (The irony is that today many watch enthusiasts who have never put on a BCD—Buyoncy Control Device—or breathed through a regulator insist that their dive watches must have a minimum depth rating of 200 meters!) Since skin divers weren’t for professionals and that they had to be comfortable to wear during the entirety of a summer vacation, they came with relatively thin and nimble cases and, therefore, had corresponding water resistance. 

More than that, most skin divers from the 1960s through 1980s were equipped with cases measuring anywhere between 32 to 38mm and all had the same typical profile: thin bezels, angular lugs, un-guarded or barely guarded crowns, and generally straight cuts between the lugs. Le Forban issued the first Brestoise in 1969 and for the new version has gently reworked the case aesthetic so that it could feel a little more modern whilst still being really easy to wear. Which is why we now get a diameter of 38.4mm, a lug-to-lug of 45mm, a thickness of 12.55m including the crystal, and a lug width of 20mm. Pretty standard dimensions for a good everyday dive watch which also doubles, as we already mentioned, as a great post-vacation and in-between holidays timepiece. For these dimensions you get 150 meters of water resistance which is, trust me, enough, thanks to a decorated screw-down case-back and a 4.7mm screw-down crown protected by discreet crown-guards. The Brestoise is comfy and shipped on a Tropic-style silicone strap. 

Just like skin divers were designed to be easy to wear, they were also engineered to be easy to use and be reliable. Nothing fancy and nothing too pedestrian either, the dive watch equivalent of a good Kia SUV but neither a Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT nor a Lada 4 x 4. (I had to manually use Google to figure out this metaphor as I am anti-ChatGPT.) So, inside the Le Forban Brestoise there is a Miyota 8215 (3Hz/42 hours of power reserve), an entry-level but reliable Japanese caliber introduced just eight years after the original Brestoise! This simply means that, in order to make this good skin diver attainable to many divers and non-divers, the brand opted for a simple movement. But it didn’t skimp on the rest of the specs: a double domed sapphire crystal, a fully polished 316L stainless steel case, a 120-click unidirectional bezel with an old-school aluminum insert, a black lacquered dial showcasing copious amounts of C3 SuperLuminova on the printed hour markers as well as the hands and bezel pip. 

For 490€/$572 USD you’re already getting a lot of good stuff on specs alone. 

Design

Where lies the beauty of the Le Forban Brestoise is, of course, in its design. It is almost identical to the original down to the typeface used for the hour markers, but everything was subtly redesigned to both make the dial a bit more modern and more balanced whilst preserving the superlative legibility of skin divers. Vintage models usually were endowed with large hour markers so that they would be as easy to read as it is to see the full Moon on a clear summer day, but that is an aesthetic we don’t see nowadays anymore. (In the introduction I mentioned Glashütte Original and referred to, but not referred to, the SeaQ for whose large printed markers were replaced by large polished applied ones.) Le Forban decided to preserve the printed nature of the hour markers which instantly makes any watch appear more utilitarian and less fancy, as well as vintage and less modern, which is what a skin diver was and still can be today. So here we do indeed find printed elements only but with dimension as most of what you see is luminous compound.

More specifically, the hour markers are made of an alternation of large Arabic numerals marking the even hours and batons marking the odd ones, and up close we can see that each marker is framed by thin white lines, so are the rectangular and lumed indices located on the minute track. Therefore, the hour markers and small rectangles are lumed whilst the minute track isn’t, and the latter is printed in white whilst the former elements have a creamy tint due to their abundant furnishing of C3 lume. All of these elements contrast superbly against the black lacquered dial, and even though there is a lot of text on it above and below the pinion, it disappears behind the large handset. The latter is the stereotypical set of small hour/broad arrow minute hands many skin divers were endowed with, and which contemporary re-editions are also made of. The seconds hand is also classic and vintage in its appearance being made of a lumed lollipop element and what appears to be a tiny spade-shaped counter-balance. 

Jean-Sebastien and Océane went as far as replicating the small trapezoidal date aperture at the three o’clock which the 1969 model also had, made of small white frame, black printed numerals set against a white disc. Although the date aperture is small I have no issues reading the date whether it is made of a single or double digits. Lastly, let’s talk about the case starting with the bezel. It is as narrow as it used to be, with silver markings printed on the aluminum insert, a lumed pip at the twelve, and a sharp coin-edge machining for the grippy part so that the bezel is easy to operate despite its thin profile. Which is how Le Forban also designed and machined the crown which is relatively small (4.7mm) yet easy to operate and protected enough by way of small crown-guards. The mid-case has a superb narrow-profile with long angular lugs which depart far into the case, arching down towards the wrist for maximum wearing comfort. Last but not least, the case-back is decorated with a beautiful image of an old-school ship helm. 

The Heart of the Matter

As it is often the case when talking about vintage re-issues, it is quite difficult to figure out how much watches used to cost 50 years ago. A few ads of vintage Zodiac Sea Wolf skin divers from the 1960s put their prices at around $900 USD in today’s dollars adjusted for inflation. But I nevertheless imagine that many skin divers, which looked the same and were most likely manufactured en masse in the same factories, would have retailed for much less than that. (It is common today to find vintage units from one of a hundred brands for $100/$200 online.) I do have a fascination for attainable pieces of horological equipment and my gut feeling tells me that the 1969 Le Forban Brestoise was such a timepiece and that today, in 2026, it remains so. More importantly, the brand preserved the charm of the original skin diver which it gently face-lifted and equipped with better tech to make it a sensical diver today, and I would argue that 490€/$572 USD isn’t too much dough to depart with for a skin diver of this pedigree. 

More often than not, brands which are taken over by new people and/or which re-issue old models charge more than they should for their creations, but this is a path Jean-Sebastien and Océane didn’t take. Instead, they fully banked on good design and a solid, but not over-the-top, set of specifications to keep the price of the Brestoise reasonable and attainable for those who have a true passion for skin divers and vintage horology. In other words, this model is a bit of a UFO in today’s skin divers re-issue market: a Zodiac Sea Wolf retails for $1,595; an Airain Sous-Marine for 1,950€/$2,278 USD; and a Longines Heritage Diver for $3,900 USD. Different types of watches in terms of components and manufacturing I know, but I would argue, once again, that what Le Forban is asking for its skin diver is beautifully reasonable and in line, philosophically speaking, with what skin divers used to be when they first came to market in the late 1950s/early 1960s. 

Conclusion 

Back in October of last year I began a journey to tell you about Le Forban and its exceptional collections of honest tool watches. We started our exploration of the revived French brand with the Marseillaise, another re-issue of an iconic dive watch made by the brand in 1979. The brand sells it for 940€/$1,091 USD which I too find to be reasonable, so is the price at which they sell the Brestoise. I for one believe—in case you didn’t know already!—that good tool watches shouldn’t cost more than a designer handbag or a good laptop (= $1,000) and today therefore I was glad to be able to tell you about such a timekeeping device. I encourage you to take a look at Le Forban’s full catalog to get a better sense of what the brand is all about. 

Thanks for reading.