Every year at Watches and Wonders – the world’s most important fair for luxury timepieces, held in Geneva, Switzerland – brands ranging from Rolex to Cartier and Patek Philippe vie for attention with extravagant booths showcasing their latest releases. This year though, Panerai stole the show with a buzzy installation that paid homage to its nautical heritage while also being very Instagrammable.

Designed and manufactured in-house by the brand, the structure was a reproduction of the historic Vasca Panerai, a tank made by the company in 1966 for the Italian Navy’s diving units to train in a controlled environment.

The Watches and Wonders installation reflected Panerai’s focus on staying true to its legacy as the historic supplier of precision tools for the Italian Navy, while also coming up with initiatives that create buzz and excitement. “From afar, you see the attraction,” explained Panerai’s CEO Emmanuel Perrin in a recent interview in Hong Kong. “But when you get [up close], it’s not a gimmick. It’s a one-to-one scale model, and there’s a whole story that is part of our history. It’s not just a marketing ploy that we made up. And you also had a playful interaction, which was very successful. We struck a chord.”

Perrin joined Panerai last year after spending more than three decades at parent company Richemont, where most recently he led the group’s specialist watchmakers distribution. One of the top luxury groups in the world, Richemont counts Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vacheron Constantin and Jaeger-LeCoultre among the maisons in its portfolio. It acquired Panerai in 1997, turning a little-known Italian watchmaker into a global success story.

“What people tend to forget about Panerai is that until 1993, it was a secret brand,” says Perrin. “It was top secret. It was an instrument for the Italian Navy, so nobody knew about it. There’s no other brand that has this kind of history and positioning because all other watch brands have been in business, commercially, since they started – that was their purpose.”

Established first as a watch retailer in Florence, Italy, in 1860, Panerai began working with the Italian Navy in 1910, making tools such as compasses and eventually timepieces starting from 1935. The navy was Panerai’s only customer until 1993, when the house released three watches that were available to the public.

This close relationship with the navy – which is still ongoing – means Panerai stands out not only within Richemont, but in the entire watch industry. Perrin describes the house as Italian-born, Swiss-made and with an aesthetic inextricably linked to functionality. “Our ‘Italianity’ is our relationship with the navy, and the fact that our watch is a tool, a professional instrument, with a purpose,” says Perrin. “It has to fulfil a function, and it has to be reliable. So if you look at the aesthetic of the watch, everything is the consequence of a function.”

Details that have become instantly recognisable as Panerai – from the large display numerals to the glow-in-the-dark luminescence and the protective crown bridge – are all the results of years of research and development done to cater to the needs of navy SEALs and divers who actually need these functions in their watches.

While in recent years Panerai had emphasised the lifestyle aspect of its identity and its Italian flair, since joining the company Perrin has shifted the focus to the technical prowess that has always been at the heart of the maison.