As the Chinese market continues to grow as a driving force in the global luxury space, watch brands are increasingly turning towards designs and complications tailored directly to Chinese tastes and culture. This has become something of an annual tradition in the watch industry as the Chinese New Year approaches, but for 2022 and the upcoming Year of [...]

Perhaps no other combination of factors excites vintage watch enthusiasts quite like early dive watches with military provenance. The blend of classic design, field-proven durability, and the romantic warmth of patina is a difficult one to beat, and few brands capture this magic formula better than Blancpain. The brands Fifty Fathoms line is one of the longe [...]

Its only fitting that for having pioneered the worlds first dive watch, Blancpain remains committed to preserving the realm that its watches were originally purpose-built to explore: the oceans. New for 2020, Blancpain is taking a page out of its usual Ocean Commitment playbook and flipping the script with a new green-dialed dive watch benefit [...]

GMT watches are also often sport watches, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. If GMT watches are designed to be great travel companions, then its logical to also ensure that they are robust enough to take whatever comes their way on the road. Hence, the most popular and iconic GMT watches - think Rolex GMT-Master and Tudor Black Bay GMT - are also spor [...]

In a rush of exciting new releases, Blancpain has expanded the Fifty Fathoms range even further. This one, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Naguers De Combat Watch, is based heavily on the earliest models in this collection dating from 1953. Here we have a very pared back imagining of the Fifty Fathoms design [...]

Tackling the re-release of a classic is risky business. Oftentimes, I feel major brands get too cute when trying to rebirth an icon from their past. There seems to be pressure coming from somewhere in these big organisations to make changes, when sometimes it just isnt necessary. In fact, a lot of the time, its completely counter-intuitive to b [...]

You could bash me over the head with a solid brick of faux-aged lume and I would probably say thank you. When obsession bites, it bites hard. And, in this case, it hasnt let go of me. The new Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Barakuda watch has just dropped and it is an absolute beauty.Continue reading

The Villeret is one of Blancpains most important and well-known collections, representing a classical side of the brands personality. Classical it may be, but overly conservative or boring it is not, in my opinion. Introduced at Baselworld 2018, the Blancpain Villeret Grande Date Jour Retrograde features a pair of useful complications presented in a s [...]

Blancpains Fifty Fathoms family of high-end dive watches has been one of my favorite luxury sport watch collections for a while. At Baselworld 2018 Blancpain introduced a few new models in the Fifty Fathoms collection including my favorite, which is this Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Automatique Grande Date 5050. Lets compare the Fifty Fathoms 5050 with the [...]

I had two options: a) write about the morbidly random Fifty Fathoms Moonphase-that appears to have disappeared from the internet as we know it and so, on a dark and gloomy day, I apparently will have to write it up anyway; or b) discuss the?Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Annuel, hoping that Id like it a bit more. The common t [...]

If there was one refrain echoed around Baselworld 2018, it was that far too many brands were playing it safe, hedging bets on the vintage re-issue trend with forgotten, back catalog editions. Blancpain sort of did this last year with the Milspec, but that watch was tied to a very specific vintage Fifty Fathoms model, and didnt feel like too much of [...]

The moon phase function has evolved from its traditional role as an accompaniment to mens perpetual calendars to a poetic complication, used more often in ladies watches. It has been reimagined in many ways that depart from the traditional blue-sky-gold-moon-and-stars configuration, but Blancpain finds a way to maintain tradition while updating the function [...]

Even as purveyors of arguably one of the worlds first truly purpose-built dive watches, theres no denying its been a long time since Blancpain has even been remotely close to the tool watch realm it once pioneered. That being said, its still neat to see the brand revisit those days with a marked degree of panache i [...]

With Blancpains handsome Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe spending the last few release cycles in the limelight, it was only time that the brands original combat diver get its due. This year, for Baselworld 2017, Blancpain is paying tribute to the Fifty Fathoms Mil-Spec 1 Watch, the original UDT-issued dive watch specially [...]

The 2017 Blancpain St. Valentines Day Special Edition.When it comes to fine watches, it sometimes seems like every day is Fathers Day. No need to create a special watch to celebrate men, since most mechanical timepieces are already geared to male aficionados. Blancpain, however, thoughtfully singles out women once a year for a sp [...]

It is a common belief that God is omnipresent, but as the physical identity of God is still a mystery, we humans connect with the Almighty by practicing different religions in different parts of the world. And every religion offers a representation of God which can be used as an object of worship and symbolism. Why am I rambling on about a topic like religion, an [...]

My absolute favorite watches are pretty-looking sport models. There is a significant volume of these watches around, but really attractive ones are hard to find. Probably the biggest challenge in making a beautiful-looking sports watch is to first make sure it is a great utility watch, an [...]

Blancpain continues to be a strong provider of unique and interesting movements in what often feels like a sea of mechanical genericism, even in the luxury watch industry. Look closely and youll see in Blancpain watches genuinely innovative attempts that are creating new assortments of existing ideas, as well as some novel ones. Today, Id like to look at the [...]

Some major watch brands seem to really think highly of ceramic as a case material and Blancpain is among them. Previously a closely guarded field of expertise of Rado and Chanel, ceramic technology and production techniques have only recently ev [...]

The past few years have seen the launch and steady expansion of Blancpains Bathyscaphe line up. In 2013, we saw the original three-hander, 2014 gave us the Bathyscaphe Chronograph, and then the beautifully blue Bathyscaphe Ocean Commitment Chronograph came in 2015. This year, Blancpain completed the fa [...]