In addition to the amazing replica Longines Heritage Military Watch with its faux-patinated dial, and new ladies’ sizing (and dials) for the Heritage Legend Diver, we were also treated to the great-looking Heritage Skin Diver. And it’s that last watch we’re going to talk further here. 
I saw this luxury replica watch during a meeting with Longines executives and told that it would not officially launch with the first wave of 2019 products. It would become available in late 2019, they said. As you can see, it’s a really great-looking tribute to a historically significant Longines, the Longines Nautilus Skin Diver – the first dive watch from Longines, actually. It’s a replica watch that I’d personally like to spend some more time with in the future outside of the less than ideal context of a trade show booth.
It’s actually quite obvious, but one aspect of this watch’s design that should not be overlooked is its size. This is a huge timepiece, and it feels large on the wrist. This is, in and of itself, not a bad thing. Wrist presence is a quality one tends to expect and even want from tool watches in general. But, on trying it on in Basel, the Skin Diver felt large for its 42mm diameter and 13.75mm height. I think that this design would have benefitted from a smaller diameter. An incremental reduction to 40mm diameter would have been great.
You’ll see an embossed image of a diver with a spear with the words “The Longines Skin Diver Watch” on the back. The Skin Diver’s water resistance is an estimable 300 meters, thanks in part to a crown that screws down. Of course, with proper gaskets and tolerances, the screw-down function isn’t necessary for water resistance per se, but it certainly cannot hurt. After all, if the crown is screwed in, there’s zero chance of it catching on the fabric of your wet suit or other gear and flooding the case. Even if the huge majority of consumers will stop short of testing the limits of this fake watch’s max depth rating, there is comfort in knowing that a watch exceeds the ISO standard for diving.
The movement inside is the L888. The Skin Diver derives displays for the hours from this movement, for the minutes, and for the seconds, with an impressive power reserve of 65 hours. And then there are the three bracelet options: a plain brown leather strap, a black tropic rubber strap, and a mesh steel bracelet. All in all, the replica Longines Heritage Skin Diver is a great-looking contemporary dive fake watch with more than ample water resistance that revives a unique and significant design from the Longines archives.