Looking Back at a Great Vintage Girard-Perregaux
1960s Girard-Perregaux Sea-Hawk / Credit: Analog/Shift
The Roaring Twenties were a very unique period in history for Western society. People, for what felt like the first time, were once again experimenting in design, architecture, and other fields, after a long and costly hiatus. And as we’ve previously noted, the post-war period was also a turning point for wristwatches; when they became more popular amongst the male population and started to be produced en masse. Girard-Perregaux had a parallel transitional period, going from producing mostly pocket watches, to focusing on wristwatches.
This transition to wristwatches naturally beckoned the development of dive watches; Rolex’s Oyster case in 1926, the Omega Marine in 1932. And then in the early 1940s, Girard-Perregaux’s Sea-Hawk. The Sea-Hawk was marketed as ‘the watch for Active Service’, an indication of the era in which it was born. And as such it was made to be water and shockproof, like its early Swiss dive watch competitors from the aforementioned brands. The emphasis on the watch’s ruggedness is important because the Second World War largely turned the watch world on to the concept of tool watches, much like the First World War did so with the concept of wristwatches. Early Girard-Perregaux Sea-Hawks competed directly with companies like Rolex and Omega in this new tool watch category, in this case specifically dive watches.
Vintage Girard-Perregaux Sea-Hawk / Credit: Stetz & Co.
In the late 1950s, the ‘Deep Diver’ line came to be, unceremoniously replacing the ‘Sea-Hawk’, which was only to be made in dress watch version for the next couple decades. Previously, Girard-Perregaux used modified third-party movements, so Sea-Hawks featured the likes of manually winding ETA or A. Schild movements. These new watches, the Deep Divers, had 200-meter water resistance and a variety of case shapes and styles, as was in vogue in the 1960s. Most importantly, however, they featured Girard-Perregaux’s new Gyromatic movements – first released in 1957.
Going into the modern era, the Girard-Perregaux Sea-Hawks continued to go through transitions, with the modern models looking nothing like the dress watch versions of 1960s and ‘70s. Nonetheless, the Sea-Hawk was and still is Girard-Perregaux’s answer to the dive watch, and for such a storied brand it really doesn’t get much renown.
By: Andres Ibarguen