Don't miss the next drop
Two hundred meters of depth rating and a chronometer certification, carried under a name built on Roman gold and colored stones: on paper a Bulgari Diagono Scuba reads almost as a contradiction. It is not. This is a jeweler’s answer to the dive watch, a properly serious diver wearing a couture name, and in our opinion one of the more underrated tool watches of its era. The ref. SD38S is where that idea sits at its purest.
The Diagono line was Bulgari’s push into sport during the 1990s, and the Scuba was its working diver. The bezel here is all business, a scalloped uni-directional diver’s bezel with a clean minute track and no logo on it. The doubled name instead lives where it belongs on a tool watch, engraved around the caseback: BVLGARI BVLGARI ringing the rim. That motif descends directly from the 1977 Bulgari Bulgari that Gerald Genta drew for the house, where he ringed the bezel with the name twice in the manner of an ancient Roman coin carrying the emperor’s inscription around its edge. Genta later admitted the doubled logo was called crass at first. It went on to become the most recognizable thing Bulgari makes, and seeing it carried onto a 200 meter diver is part of what makes this piece quietly compelling.
Inside is the automatic caliber 220-NBBA, and the rotor states its case plainly: BVLGARI, TWENTY-ONE 21 JEWELS, 220-NBBA, SWISS. The 220 is built on Girard-Perregaux architecture, a genuinely good base, and Bulgari sent it through chronometer certification rather than leaving it standard. The bridges carry Cotes de Geneve striping and perlage with a gold-toned balance turning beneath, finishing you do not strictly need on a dive watch and exactly the sort of thing that separates this from a parts-bin sport piece.
The case measures 38mm across and roughly 47mm lug to lug in stainless steel, compact by modern diver standards and all the better for it on the wrist. A scalloped uni-directional bezel frames the dial, the screw-down crown sits guarded at three, and the whole thing is rated to 200 meters. Flip it over and the decagonal screw-down back is engraved BVLGARI BVLGARI around its rim with FABRIQUE EN SUISSE inside, the reference SD 38 S and case number D 5641 stamped at center, and the interior marked STAINLESS STEEL. Wear is honest and light, the brushed surfaces showing the small marks of a watch that was used as intended.
The matte black dial is the part collectors will linger on. BVLGARI sits under twelve, AUTOMATIC below it, then CHRONOMETER OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED and 200 m stacked above six, with SWISS MADE at the base and a date at three. Applied luminous dots mark the hours, flanked by applied Arabic 12 and 6, and every one of them has aged to a warm cream and pumpkin tone that the sword hands echo. We read that aging as character earned honestly, and we would not touch it.
The watch comes on its original Bulgari stainless steel bracelet with the exposed screw links the line is known for, closing on the original Bulgari folding clasp. It is integrated and substantial, correct to the reference.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, this is a Bulgari Diagono Scuba for the collector who would rather own one watch that argues with itself than two that play it safe. A jeweler made a diver, certified it, and signed the caseback twice. We think that is the whole point.
