When the Oris Diver 65 Cotton Candy watches were announced I was immediately drawn to and curious about the pink version. I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to see one in the flesh for a long time though because I live quite far from any AD.

During a GTG weekend in Lyon with some friends though, I saw one in an AD window and thought “wow how cool! I get to try one on”. Notice I didn’t have any plan to buy a watch during that weekend, and maybe I should add a bit of context to the purchase.

Although the Fifthwrist crew are all great guys, most of them live thousands of kilometers away, in places where the steering wheels are on the wrong side of cars and everyone drives in the wrong lane. Their equivalent to wild cats hop around with pouches on their bellies to carry their offspring. So excuse me for having a few French watch geek friends with whom I chat on WhatsApp and can sometimes meet to drink and eat “a la française”. And even if some of them do have a tendency to collect a lot of mainstream stuff, they are nice guys and we have a laugh.

And that was exactly what we were doing that weekend in Lyon. So as not to flood all the ADs at once by entering the 16 of us at the same time in each boutique we had split up in small groups. That meant that when I entered the AD to try the Oris Diver 65 Cotton Candy I found a dozen of my friends already sat around the table with the manager and quite a serious layout of watches on the table: Lange Zeitwerk and Datogtraph, Vacheron Cornes de Vache chronograph and American 1921, some panerai and JLC too…

Obviously none of us were going to buy any watches at any AD this weekend, especially not such high end pieces, so when I came in and said: ” I’d like to try the pink Cotton Candy in the window please”, they all stared at me and knew something serious was going to happen. Because THEY KNOW what can happen and how I can buy a watch in a couple of seconds.

Now this watch is quite something. Oris really nailed it with the diver 65 design from the start. Perfect universal size, thinness, lots of reflections and details, very confortable on bracelet and on strap. On my wrist in the boutique my mind just kept telling me “this is dope this is dope this is dope this is dope”, all my friends were staring at me and the watch saying “Jesus that’s fucking pink!” and having a laugh. Then I looked at the shop owner and told him: “ok I’ll take it. What can you do on the price?”.

Blank stares and silence from the pals. They were actually really happy that I managed to get them out of there after having taken out of the safe half a million’s worth of watches without any of them having the balls to buy anything… let alone a pink watch!

It was a fun moment and a good memory we often make allusions to. And that watch will always be associated with that fun weekend and that precious enjoyable moment. The watch is extremely cool, it’s become one of my “go-to” everyday piece, some serious competition to my pelagos. It’s also quite a strap monster, with very cool combos with the bracelet, the new pink perlon strap, green, blue or pink leather straps too, and of course the best combo possible with the Erika’s Originals MN straps which make this watch soooo comfy.

The Oris Diver 65 Cotton Candy bronze gains patina really fast, much more than other bronze watches from other brands when I compare. I like it, it gets different shades each time, and some lemon juice takes it off real quick. The lacquered dial is just gorgeous and contrasts sufficiently with the golden hands.

If you don’t have the balls to fall for the pink version, there exists a blue and a green one too. Do consider a bollock graft though as the pink Cotton Candy is definitely the most unique combination out there. Pink and bronze… what a killer!

You’ll find all the specs on the Oris website, so I won’t bore you with that.