These last few weeks, summer has certainly shown up with a vengeance. The heat wave has been almost intolerable, and at the risk of sounding like a total thalassophile, I’ll just say how grateful I am to live in a city that has no shortage of beaches, all within a short drive.
All this time at the beach had me thinking back to a few years ago, when I was fortunate enough to go on an incredible trip to the Bahamas, with a beautiful stay at Baha Mar. One of the highlights of this trip was going diving and snorkelling at Stuart’s Cove. In fact, the Bahamas was the first place I ever went snorkelling, and my first experience was during a shark feeding, no less.
To set the scene: imagine being on a boat, out in open water, very choppy open water, and being told to jump off, hold on to a rope, and keep your movements calm because they were about to feed sharks below. The first jump did not go so well for me. Luckily, the very experienced guide talked me through it, and I am so glad I trusted him enough to go back in the water, because after that, I was hooked.
Anyway, you may be wondering what all this has to do with a wrist stack. Well, the flashbacks to this trip had me dreaming of dive watches, hence the Deep Sea Stack was born.
Step 1: The Anchor
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
I need to talk about this watch for a second, because I am genuinely a little obsessed. What I find unique about the heritage of the Rado Captain Cook is that it was a dive watch originally designed in 1962 for “doctors, engineers, athletes, deep sea divers, racing car drivers,” in the brand’s own words at the time. Basically, anyone who needed a high-performance timepiece to keep up with them, not divers exclusively. Fewer than 8,000 were made before production stopped in 1968, and the design sat forgotten in Rado’s archives for nearly fifty years until it was revived in 2017.
None of that history is actually what sold me on it, though. What sold me is the blue. It is one of the most stunning dial colours I have worn in ages, the kind of ice blue that shifts depending on the light hitting it. At 12 o’clock sits a small rotating anchor, Rado’s signature, originally a functional indicator (if it stopped spinning freely, the watch needed servicing), now the brand’s most recognizable detail. Flip the watch over and the case back has its own little scene: three seahorses and three stars stamped into the metal, a detail you would never guess is there just from looking at the watch on your wrist.
It is also, somehow, one of the most comfortable watches I own, light enough that I forget it is there. This is a watch I would wear every single day even if I never went near an ocean again, which is exactly the point I want to make with it this month.
Step 2: The Personality
As those of you who are repeat readers may have gleaned by now, throughout my pieces, I tend to have a bit of a love affair with vintage jewellery. This particular Dior heart bracelet was a gift from my sister, picked up on one of her trips to Paris. It is the piece that brings personality into the stack, not because it is the loudest thing on the wrist, but because charms are inherently personal in a way a clean bangle or bracelet rarely is. A soft purple bead and small dangling hearts come together to tell a bit of a romantic story, juxtaposed against a more functional and arguably more masculine timepiece. Together, they tell the story of being strong but still soft; independent but still romantic. It is also, not coincidentally, the one piece in this stack I never went shopping for myself, and gifted pieces tend to make the best personality additions for exactly that reason: nobody chooses a gift to match something, which keeps a stack from feeling too curated.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
Step 3: The Story
Every stack needs one piece that means something, and this one always earns that spot. Taking a cue from the Dior charm bracelet discussed, this piece keeps the theme of romance alive. On my second trip to Dubai, I was walking through the Gold Souk with friends, browsing the endless jewellery and being shown piece after piece with each salesperson trying to outdo the last. None of the jewellery they were showing me was really speaking to me, though, and then it dawned on me: what I really wanted was a bracelet that was uniquely mine, something that nobody else, or at least very few others, had. A few conversations later, I found a jeweller who understood my vision and was able to design the exact piece I wanted, a bracelet that simply had the word “Love” carved out in Arabic. A few sketches later, he was able to create the piece by reshaping an 18K white gold bangle into the concept we had agreed upon.
What I love about it goes beyond the sentiment, though. The Arabic script gives the whole piece a sculptural, almost architectural shape, more like a small piece of calligraphy than a conventional bangle. It holds its own structurally against the rest of the stack rather than just sitting there as a sentimental extra, which is exactly why it became one of my favourite story pieces.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
There is also a reason it works specifically next to the Rado. The Captain Cook is a solid, rounded shape: dense metal with no negative space. The bangle is the opposite: open, cut through with calligraphy and more air than metal in places. Putting a solid shape and an open one on the same wrist keeps the eye moving between the two instead of settling flat on either, which is what gives a stack that sense of “something worth looking twice at” instead of just reading as a pile of jewellery.
You do not need a custom, made-on-the-spot piece to pull this off, though. A story piece is not about how it was acquired; it is about the fact that it means something to you and that you can tell someone why, whether that is a hand-me-down, something you bought for yourself after a milestone, or a piece from a trip you still think about. What makes a story piece work in a stack is that it should be different in shape or form from everything else on the wrist: open where the rest is solid, angular where the rest is round, so it reads as a distinct chapter rather than more of the same.
Returning to my particular story piece, whenever I wear this bangle, it tells the story not only of manifesting love, but also of a girl who knew exactly what she wanted and didn’t settle for anything less.
Step 4: The Texture
Another vintage fave is this Tiffany Somerset mesh bracelet that came home with me back when I lived in Vancouver. It also has a matching ring and necklace, though I didn’t use either of them in this particular stack. It’s not visible here, but one of the things I love most about this piece is the buckle clasp detail, that specific bit of Tiffany design language that makes it instantly recognizable, even tucked under the rest of the stack. It also earns its spot next to the Rado for a more practical reason: the Captain Cook’s case is highly polished, almost mirror-like, and pairing one smooth, reflective piece with another tends to flatten a stack rather than build it. Mesh does the opposite: it catches light in small broken flickers instead of one clean reflection, giving the eye somewhere else to land.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
Step 5: The Edit
In sticking with a general rule to add some sparkle or shine to complete a stack, I nearly added a blue Swarovski Matrix Tennis bracelet, featuring light-aquamarine round-cut stones and a rhodium-plated finish. On paper, it made sense: blue watch, blue bracelet, a coordinated moment, but once I had it on, I realized that was exactly the problem. The Rado’s dial is the whole point this month, and having another blue piece sitting right next to it on the wrist meant the two of them were competing for the same attention instead of one clearly leading. So the Swarovski came back off, and the Rado got to keep its blue all to itself. Honestly, I think it was that I love this Rado timepiece so much that I really didn’t want anything else competing for attention. Sometimes the edit is not about too much sparkle; it is about too much of the same idea in one place.
Et voilà , the Deep Sea Stack, ready for anything from a boat tour to dinner without missing a beat.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
Game On: The Captain’s Charm
Heat waves aside, let’s chat for a minute about the other thing that July has been all about: I have been a little World Cup obsessed (note that “little obsessed” = literally cancelling plans to watch every single match). Of course, you cannot get through a World Cup season without acquiring the actual it-item of the tournament, the BofA Fan Band, Bank of America’s free collectible charm bracelet that has people lining up for hours at Fan Fests just to build their own. Being the jewellery aficionado and football fan that I am, I knew that this was something that I absolutely had to have, no matter how long I’d have to stand in line (or no matter how long my sister had to stand in line… I mean, isn’t that the point of sisters?).
If you are wondering what a BofA Fan Band from the World Cup has to do with a dive watch, go back to that Rado quote from Step 1: “doctors, engineers, athletes, deep sea divers, racing car drivers.” Athletes, and sports more broadly, were always part of the brief, not an afterthought.
My Fan Band, of course, had to have the Canada charm on it, and, ironically, it also has a small square charm with a single letter C, the captain’s armband. Sitting right next to a watch called the Captain Cook, it feels meant to be. I could not have planned that coincidence if I tried.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
The perfect stack for the summer of soccer and beyond, a memento from living in one of the host cities of the largest sporting event in the world.
Alternate Take: The Jelly Stack
Here is the thing nobody tells you about “dive watch” as a category: it describes a family of functions, not one fixed personality. Take the Swatch Scubaqua collection: while each model is a dive watch with genuine water resistance (100 m) and real dive-style engineering, the collection comes in a series of bright, playful colours inspired by jellyfish. Crafted from Bioceramic and biosourced materials, the watches bring their own style and statement to the dive watch category. I personally opted for the Flower Hat, with its transparent pink dial and matte white Bioceramic and shiny transparent pink biosourced material case.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
One quirky detail worth a second look: the crown sits at 10 o’clock instead of the usual 3 o’clock, an unconventional placement that has become a signature across the whole Scubaqua line. The hands and indexes also glow in the dark, a nice touch for a watch clearly meant to be worn hard, not just admired from a distance.
This one does not get stacked in my usual wrist stack way; instead, it gets paired with a single statement ring, and that is actually by design. Before jumping into the water, taking off a single ring is far easier than unclasping an entire bracelet stack, not to mention easier to keep track of once it is off.
But there is also a bigger case to be made for the statement ring generally. It does not have to be a designer splurge, though it certainly can be. It can just as easily be something with a story: a piece you picked up somewhere you cannot even remember. It still does the job. The whole point of a statement ring is that it is louder than an everyday ring is supposed to be; it is meant to be noticed, and that is exactly what makes it such a good partner for a watch like this one. You get personality on the wrist without committing to a full stack, one piece doing the work that would otherwise take four or five.
In my case, that piece is a ring with a multi-coloured crocheted flower detail. It’s a ring that I have had for so long that I genuinely do not remember the story behind it, other than that it was purchased during my time living in London. What makes this particular ring a statement piece is not just the colour, but also the material. A crocheted ring is hardly run-of-the-mill; it stands out purely through texture. Worn alongside this Swatch Scubaqua, it felt like the perfect way to add a touch of whimsy to an already playful piece.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
Which brings me back to the Bahamas, actually, because while the sharks were not necessarily playful, there were other wildlife encounters that may have veered into the whimsical category. On day two at Stuart’s Cove, with calmer water this time, I jumped in with my underwater camera, started heading to depths unknown (well, unknown for me), and saw something coming straight at me at what felt like full speed. As a sensible adult, I thought to myself that I should probably move out of the way, perhaps even get out of the water. As the deep sea explorer I was training to become, I instead decided this was the optimal time to capture some photos and video. After doing that as quickly as I possibly could, I popped my head up, saw nobody around, and swam back to the boat like the perfectly reasonable adult that I was (sometimes). Only later did I realize: not a shark. A manatee. A very friendly, playful, extremely unbothered manatee, filmed at close range by someone who was fully convinced she was about to be shark bait.
Shark and manatee encounters aside, that trip to the Bahamas taught me what a dive watch is actually for. Not a look. A tool. And whether it is a Rado Captain Cook that can take you from the deep sea to a five-star restaurant or a Swatch Scubaqua in open water with an unbothered manatee for company, that is exactly what both of these are built to do.
And with that, I am off to take advantage of this quiet FIFA match-free day to head to the beach, Captain Cook on the wrist and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt in hand.
For more stack inspo, follow along on IG: @torontowatchgirl.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
Featured in this month’s stack are the Rado Captain Cook Automatic R32223203 ($3,500 CAD), the Swatch Scubaqua ($210 CAD; Flower Hat seen on wrist), and the Swarovski Matrix Tennis bracelet, Round cut, Blue, Rhodium plated ($350 CAD).
