Blancpain?s Villeret collection channels the haute horlogerie roots of the world?s oldest watchmaking brand and continues to innovate with an array of grand and practical complications. We explore the collection’s origins, as well as its historical and modern highlights, in this feature from our October 2020 issue.

The author Thomas Wolfe is often credited with coining the idiom, ?You can?t go home again,? though Wolfe himself is believed to have taken it from a conversation with his friend, British-Australian journalist Ella Winter, and asked her permission to use it for the title of his 1940 novel. It?s likely, however, that both writers would have thought twice if they?d seen what Blancpain, one of the Swiss watch world?s oldest and most accomplished manufactures, has accomplished by returning to the earliest years of its history, which started in the picturesque town of Villeret.
Blancpain, today one of the Swatch Group?s triumvirate of Swiss ?prestige? brands alongside Breguet and Jaquet Droz, was founded in 1735 in Villeret, in the Bernese Jura, but has been based in the town of Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux since 1983. It?s fair to say that it has become known in the modern watch-enthusiast community more for its pioneering divers? watch, the Fifty Fathoms, than for its high-complication prowess and historically elegant designs. Nevertheless, Blancpain?s commitment to classical watchmaking has never wavered, and it is within the nostalgically name...