Seiko 5 Sports x Bamford Limited Edition Presents Retro-Futuristic Dive Watch

Retro-futuristic divers are evidently on the mind for British designer George Bamford this year. Back in May their name was attached to the Girard-Perregaux Deep Diver Legacy Edition with its distinctive orange, blue and white compressor design. Now they’ve partnered with Seiko for a new collaboration that explores the same colours and themes at 1/33^rd of the price. It’s the Seiko 5 Sports x Bamford Limited Edition.

The 42.5mm steel case draws inspiration from two archival Seiko references, the 1980s SKX and 1960s 5 Sports, resulting in smooth, flowing lines around the arc of the watch as well as a built up crown at 4 o’clock. Atop that sits a unidirectional dive timer bezel with full 60-minute graduation that emphasises the first 20-minutes with an orange highlight. Though with a water resistance of 100m, the general advice is that it’s more suited for swimming and surface level water sport activities than heading into the deep dark.

But that’s ok because the concept behind the bright colours of the dial is to evoke the vibe of a retro-futuristic lido, so the furthest it will go underwater is the deep end. Getting into the details of the dial, it mostly consists of a light blue tinted, translucent glass. Though it you can see the operation of the day-date function, with twin discs showing the days of the week in both English and Japanese (so you can swap between them when setting up the watch) on the inner track and the date on the outer track.

That’s paired with an orange lollipop seconds hand, orange arrow minute hand and blue plongeur hour hand – learn all about hand shapes here. All three hands are coated with lume, as are the rectangular hour markers, for low light legibility. More than that though, the days of the week disc is also lumed as is the central strip of the NATO style strap, giving the watch a cool neon vibe that feels almost cyberpunk, leaning into the retro-futuristic aesthetic even more.

Powering the watch is the calibre 4R36 with 41-hour power reserve. It’s a movement that will be familiar with any microbrand lover under the designation NH36, which is what they call it in non-Seiko watches. It’s protected by a caseback that bears the Bamford Watch Department’s BWD logo.

It’s limited to 2,025 pieces worldwide at a price of £400. So yeah, just a slight bit more accessible than the £12,900 Girard-Perregaux. And unlike the GP, you might actually wear it to your local lido. While there may be no points for originality in repeating your same collaboration with different brands, of the two I think the Seiko actually makes the more sense to exist.

More details at Seiko.