Defy

The Defy was born in 1969 with reference A3642: an angular, octagonal case closed by a fourteen-sided bezel, designed above all to convey toughness and shock resistance — hence the name. The design, unusually geometric and industrial for the time, in some ways anticipated the language that Gérald Genta would popularise a few years later on other steel sports watches, but on its release the model was not a great commercial success, long remaining a minor chapter compared with Zenith's chronographs of the same period.

In the 1970s the line continued with a second generation that simplified the case while keeping the fourteen-sided bezel, and introduced a chronograph version based on the in-house calibre 3019 PHC — an El Primero variant with date — that tied the Defy more closely to the brand's technical heritage. The name then stayed in the background for several decades, until a mid-2000s relaunch with the Defy Xtreme series, which introduced skeletonised dials openly showing the El Primero movement, in a deliberately more avant-garde guise than the rest of the catalogue.

The most recent breakthrough came in March 2017 with the Defy El Primero 21, which brought into the line a calibre able to time to a hundredth of a second thanks to a second gear train dedicated to the chronograph function, oscillating at 360,000 vibrations per hour (50 Hz) alongside the traditional 5 Hz timekeeping train. Since then the Defy has lived on in several families — from the more compact Defy Classic to the Defy Skyline, presented for the manufacture's 160th anniversary in 2025 — that share the sporty character and the link with high frequency, though they have moved far from the octagonal case of the original 1969 model.