Blancpain’s legendary Fifty Fathoms, which more or less established the blueprint for the modern-day dive watches that followed its debut in 1953, is the gift that keeps on giving for the venerable Swiss brand. The model begat an entire collection, one of the three pillars of today’s Blancpain, which continues to expand every year with new models and complications. Now the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe, a retro-look version that debuted in 2013, is growing into a sub-collection of its own, with two new references debuting at Baselworld 2018: the Bathyscaphe Day Date ’70s and Bathyscaphe Quantième Annuel.
Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Day Date ’70s
Whereas the original three-hand Bathyscaphe took its direct inspiration from the model that debuted in 1956 ? which was intended to be a more wearable, “civilian” version of the bigger, military-designed Fifty Fathoms that preceded it three years prior ? the Bathyscaphe Day Date ’70s (above) takes its cues from a further evolution of that design that Blancpain offered during the 1970s, with day and date windows at 3 o’clock. These features, Blancpain told us at Baselworld, were a testament to the growing popularity of dive watches as everyday wearable objects rather than tools; a diver underwater doesn’t need to know the day and date, obviously, but for a traveling businessman who might be wearing the watch, it could prove useful indeed. The new watch retains the overall dia...