Seiko’s 145th year has played out like a slow reveal, one new release at a time. Back in February, the brand leaned on gold to stand in for its past. In May, it reached for the Seiko Blue it settled on in the 1960s to represent the present. Now comes the third act, a run of six limited editions built around a single traditional dye and pitched, a little grandly, as the brand’s future. The shade tying them together is Edo Purple.
Seiko traces itself to 1881, when Kintaro Hattori opened a shop for selling and repairing watches in Tokyo’s Ginza district, back when the city still carried its older name of Edo. Edo purple was a dye that ran through Edo-period clothing, and Seiko has now dropped it onto watches that otherwise share almost nothing. King Seiko, which appeared in the earlier gold and blue waves, sits this one out. What’s left runs from an entry diver to a GPS Astron, all in the same purple.
At the affordable end sits the 5 Sports SKX HDB003, a 42.5mm automatic on the 4R36, with 100m of water resistance, a black Hardlex bezel, and the darkest purple of the group. This is the 2025-generation 5 Sports SKX styling rather than a revival of the old 200m SKX007 diver, and coming from a Prospex Turtle, I read it as sporty everyday wear that borrows diver styling rather than diver credentials. At €450 and 9,999 pieces, it’s the one most people will actually be able to buy.
The Presage Cocktail Time GMT HCB006 is the one I keep looking at. It runs the 4R34, the same caller-style GMT I’ve got in my Seiko 5 GMT, so I already know you set local time with the main hands and leave the 24-hour hand for a second zone. That’s fine once you expect it. At 40.5mm, 50m, and a Hardlex box crystal for €620, it asks dress-watch money for fairly modest glass, though the saturated radial dial and gold GMT hand look great. The Alpinist HBC006 makes the stronger case for me, with its 72-hour 6R55, sapphire, 200m, and internal compass bezel at €980.
Then it gets stranger, which is the fun part. There’s a Solar Speedtimer chronograph running the six-month V192, and the black-coated Rotocall HFL001, the digital A824 reissue of the 1982 astronaut watch, wearing its purple on an octagonal function bezel.
The Rotocall is another piece here recently reviving a discontinued model and those newer ones have been tough for me to find lately, so it’s the one I’d keep an eye on. Rounding things out is the titanium Astron HAB011 GPS Solar at €3,000, the priciest and most complicated of the set.
So is purple-for-the-future a real statement, or a paint sample stretched across six unrelated watches? I’m not sure it matters. The Rotocall and the Alpinist would tempt me in any color, and that might be the point.
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Michael Peñate is an American writer, photographer, and podcaster based in Seattle, Washington. His work typically focuses on the passage of time and the tools we use to connect with that very journey. From aviation to music and travel, his interests span a multitude of disciplines that often intersect with the world of watches – and the obsessive culture behind collecting them.