By Cam Wolf

Copyright gq

For over 50 years, Panerai made watches with the most desirable of qualities: You couldn’t buy them. The brand first introduced the Radiomir, named for the radium powder that made it glow in the dark, as equipment for the Italian Royal Navy in 1936. Then as now, Paneria’s watches were huge and beefy, with the ability to dive deep underwater and still be readable thanks to those signature luminous hands and hour markers. Panerai originally made the watches for the Italian navy’s secret underwater assault operation, and for many decades afterwards, the brand’s timepieces were only available to members of the military. That changed in 1993, when the watchmaker debuted its first civilian model, the Luminor Marina Militare. Now, Panerai is bringing back that OG game-changing watch.
The new release represents the long-awaited revival of a model that completely revolutionized Panerai and the watch market at large in the ’90s and early 2000s. “1993 represents a foundational moment for the brand, as it marked Panerai’s transition from being a supplier of the Italian Navy shrouded in military secrecy to its emergence into public view as a pioneer within the territory of big, tough watches,” says Alessandro Ficarelli, Panerai’s chief marketing officer.
Panerai was careful to faithfully recreate the Luminor from 1993, with the aesthetics remaining basically unchanged. “It was never about reinventing a piece, but about honoring a pivotal milestone for our brand and history,” Ficarelli says. The watch’s dial could hardly be simpler, with only a few lines of text and cartoonishly large hour markers. The most important designation is near 6 o’clock, where you’ll find the phrase “Marina Militare,” signifying this was a watch originally intended for the Italian Navy. The watch is characteristically massive, even though Panerai realized even in 1993 that its watches were probably too large for most customers and dropped its diameter from 47 mm to 44 mm. Still, this was a very big timepiece for the era.
With this new Luminor, Panerai also chose to intentionally recreate a defect found on a small handful of pieces from 1993. When these watches were originally produced, Panerai put a layer of lacquer on the dials to cover the tritium (the material that made the watch’s hands and numerals glow) and protect the lume. However, the combination of these two materials created a chemical reaction that turned the numerals a pretty tangerine or toffee brown color. Because the hands didn’t receive the same lacquer treatment, they didn’t age the same way. Collectors refer to these as “non-matching” dials. Numbers vary on how many of these were actually made—Panerai says around 30, while the watch journalist Jose Perez and other enthusiasts put the number closer to just 10—making them extremely desirable. “The ‘non-matching dials and hands’ illustrates how a perceived imperfection can evolve into a highly desirable feature for watch collectors and connoisseurs,” Ficarelli says.
The new Luminors take that mistake and make it a feature. The numerals mirror the milky brown shade, no unpredictable chemical reaction necessary, while the hands are made up in pure eggshell white. These mismatching colors highlight a funny quirk in the watch world, where defects can often help raise the value of a watch by turning an otherwise mass-produced product into a one-of-a-kind rarity.
However, Panerai isn’t making everything on this new watch to its 1993 standards. While the look of the watch is pure heritage, the mechanics and materials are modern and reliable. The updated Luminor features a new-and-improved movement, as well as a DLC coating on the case to achieve its blacked-out look—a tougher upgrade over the PVD treatment on the original.
The original Luminor wasn’t just important for ushering Panerai into the commercial watch market—it also helped shift the tastes of watch collectors. Shortly after the company began selling its wares to civilians, Panerai won over both Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarnegger as fanboys. The action heroes wore the Italian brand in movies and helped push huge watches to the forefront in the process. The trend was so indomitable that competitors like Rolex and Omega quickly moved to make their own saucer-sized timepieces in the early 2000s.
If you aren’t tired of the Panerai history lesson just yet, the release of this watch also coincides with the opening of a new exhibit about the brand titled The Depths of Time. “Through an archive composed of never-before-seen original correspondence with the Royal Italian Navy, technical drawings, prototypes, and instruments, visitors will be allowed to explore the brand’s deep connection with the Marina Militare,” Ficarelli says. The exhibit will be on display at the brand’s Florence flagship starting September 10 through the end of November. After that initial run, Panerai will move The Depths of Time to New York.
The revamped Panerai Luminor packages up basically everything we want in a great, new watch. There is a fanatical commitment to recreating a beloved vintage piece, a historical weight for both the brand and the culture at large, and a playful design quirk that made the original a cult classic. Since it started outfitting civilians 32 years ago, Panerai has become one of the most important watchmakers in the world. It all started with this Luminor.