You might think of Panerai’s most recent catalogue of watches – which includes new additions to the Submersible, Luminor, and Luminor Due (pronounced doo-ay, as in Italian for “two”) families – as the brand’s answer to the existential challenge faced by all historic watchmakers: how does one keep moving forward while retaining a link to the past?

Heritage is everything to Panerai. This is a brand that made its name as a supplier of watches, compasses and depth gauges for commandos in the Royal Italian Navy during the Second World War, and that can claim among its many innovations the invention of the luminescent, radium-based coating that made it possible to read the dial of a watch underwater.

When you buy a Panerai, you’re buying into that sense of history and tradition. You want a watch that looks and feels like it could have been worn by an elite marine commando in the 1940s and 1950s. You want the imposing wrist presence that a 44mm or 47mm case provides, because that’s how big WWII-era diving watches needed to be in order to do their job.

On the other hand, you want the things that a modern timepiece provides, such as innovative new case materials, higher standards of finish, and slimmer, more discreet movements. What Panerai has shown a knack for over the past few years is delivering these two seemingly contradictory qualities in the very same watch.

Take the newest addition to the Submersible family, Panerai’s line of proper diving watches, which introduces an all-new case material, Goldtech™. Not content with having mastered carbon fibre with its proprietary Carbotech™, the brand’s crack team of material scientists has now created an alloy of platinum, copper and 18-carat gold that’s at once hard-wearing and strikingly beautiful, that tiny percentage of copper imbuing the metal with a subtle burnished glow.

Or the Luminor Due, which updates the iconic, mid-century Luminor with a significantly slimmer in-house mechanism, resulting in a watch that remains respectful of the original design while being far easier to slip under the cuff of a shirt. At a time when the majority of Swiss watchmakers are releasing updated versions of their most popular models in proportions better suited to slimmer wrists, this is nothing more than good business sense – but it’s executed in a way that doesn’t trample over the traditions on which the brand was built.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of old-school Panerai – unapologetically macho watches made for men with shipyard ropes for wrists – don’t worry. There’s plenty of those in the 2019 lineup, too.