Historical significance

When it was founded in 1860, Italian watchmaker Officine Panerai produced watches exclusively for the use of the Italian navy, in particular the divers. It would explain the characteristics of its two main lines, the Radiomir and the Luminor. When the brand began manufacturing for the consumer market 16 years ago, it made a conscious decision to retain that exclusivity and historical reference.

To the untrained eye, it may look like the brand is just reworking previous Radiomirs and Luminors with minor adjustments. But to an exclusive class of watch aficionados, each tiny change in the dial, the materials and the movement is a significant revolution awaited with bated breath.

Angelo Bonati, CEO of Officine Panerai for the past 16 years, is happy with the brand's niche positioning. "It has been a big effort to keep this [direction] because the temptation to go left and right is easy because one minute you get the support of the market but the next moment you don't know where you are," Bonati says.

SIHH has always been a challenge for Bonati, albeit one he enjoys greatly. Faced with brands with a longer history, more mainstream recognition, or higher production numbers, it's not always easy to stand one's ground. Staying on course, Panerai's presentation this year at the fair was a play with materials and design, and two new movements worthy of its seafaring history.

This year's new movements are the P9100, the manufacture's first automatic movement with the chronograph flyback function, and the P9100/R, which combines the chronograph with the Regatta countdown for the start of yacht races. The P9100 powers this year's new novelty, the 44mm Luminor 1950 3 Days Chrono Flyback, which comes in stainless steel (PAM00524) and rose gold (PAM00525) and features chronograph and flyback buttons at 10 o'clock and 8 o'clock, respectively.

P9100/R powers the new Luminor 1950 Regatta 3 Days Chrono Flyback Titanio, which is 47mm. Developed with yachting fans in mind, the new movement allows racers to have an accurate countdown to the start of the race. An orange push-button at four o'clock moves the central orange chronograph minute hand back one minute at a time. Starting the chronograph stop/start button at 10 o'clock, it indicates first the minutes and seconds which remain until the start, and then, when the countdown has finished, the time elapsed since the start of the race.