The path to love in the modern age is challenging, and as we navigate the adventure to find amour, there’s an entire encyclopaedia of dos and don’ts (or, at least, there ought to be). But did you know this is especially true when it comes to watches? Seems unfair to add yet another thing to think about as you get ready for a date, yet here we are. Ever encountered someone awkwardly asking you the value of your Rolex? Or met an aficionado who spoke about nothing but tourbillons for two hours? You’re not alone.

For almost as long as wristwatches have existed, people have wanted to take them underwater. Rolex invented the first properly waterproof watch in the shape of the Oyster case in 1926 and the following year pioneered the concept of the “brand ambassador” by putting one on the wrist of cross-Channel swimmer Ms Mercedes Gleitze. Waterproofing improved rapidly as watch companies met the demands of the world’s militaries in the 1940s, and diving watches achieved true popularity in the 1950s and 1960s as scuba diving became a leisure activity, accelerating technological advances in screwed-down crowns, rubber gaskets and rotating bezel rings circling the dial. Nowadays, they are prized for their workaday “throw on and forget” factor, bold and simple looks, their thick case’s resistance to magnetism… But that doesn’t stop Switzerland’s finest continuing to enhance their aquatic performance. Here are seven of the coolest and most capable dive watches on the market today.

In many ways, a pilot’s watch is the original wristwatch. Watches were attached to bracelets as far back as the 17th century, but the modern watch as we know it only really took off, if you will, with the advent of the age of flight in the early 20th century. Almost certainly the first was Mr Louis Cartier’s answer to flyboy pioneer Mr Alberto Santos-Dumont and his plea for a timepiece for which he wouldn’t need to rummage in his pockets while wrestling the controls. Concomitantly, the staple elements of a pilot’s wristwatch were established: high-contrast legibility and luminous markings, sturdy cases and a certain degree of magnetic resistance (a cockpit’s instrument array hides a battery of electric solenoids). Those traits form the basis of a modern-day tool watch, compounded in 1948 by IWC Schaffhausen’s RAF-issue Mark XI. And today, they form the perfect weekend watch, matched better to casualwear than a lounge suit – or indeed G-suit. Scroll down for our own particular mavericks.

Mr Michel Haddi once tried to buy his two sons a Rolex each on their 18th birthdays. They both declined. “It wasn’t that I wanted them to have a watch in the traditional way,” says Haddi. “It was more I know that if you’re somewhere around the world and in deep shit, a Rolex can be converted into cash anywhere. It’s security.” Haddi, the acclaimed fashion photographer and celebrity portraitist, has often found himself in such situations – caught up in tribal disputes in war-torn Yemen; facing down East German soldiers as the Berlin Wall tumbled. “But I’ve only ever had to pawn a camera myself so far, and that was because I got carried away, spent too much and ran out of money,” he laughs. “I think my boys just think they’re never likely to be in a tricky situation.”

The path to love in the modern age is challenging, and as we navigate the adventure to find amour, there’s an entire encyclopaedia of dos and don’ts (or, at least, there ought to be). But did you know this is especially true when it comes to watches? Seems unfair to add yet another thing to think about as you get ready for a date, yet here we are. Ever encountered someone awkwardly asking you the value of your Rolex? Or met an aficionado who spoke about nothing but tourbillons for two hours? You’re not alone.

For almost as long as wristwatches have existed, people have wanted to take them underwater. Rolex invented the first properly waterproof watch in the shape of the Oyster case in 1926 and the following year pioneered the concept of the “brand ambassador” by putting one on the wrist of cross-Channel swimmer Ms Mercedes Gleitze. Waterproofing improved rapidly as watch companies met the demands of the world’s militaries in the 1940s, and diving watches achieved true popularity in the 1950s and 1960s as scuba diving became a leisure activity, accelerating technological advances in screwed-down crowns, rubber gaskets and rotating bezel rings circling the dial. Nowadays, they are prized for their workaday “throw on and forget” factor, bold and simple looks, their thick case’s resistance to magnetism… But that doesn’t stop Switzerland’s finest continuing to enhance their aquatic performance. Here are seven of the coolest and most capable dive watches on the market today.