The Blancpain Lady B Roots Contemporary Feminine Watchmaking in 1950s Spirit
Inspired by the original Ladybird of 1956, the new Blancpain Lady B is a modern watch infused with the manufacture’s historical feats.
The new Blancpain Lady B is a unique proposition for today’s feminine wrist. It is small in diameter, measuring only 19mm across, but is far from flat, with a thickness of over 13mm. The result is a bubble-shaped watch, harmonious, simple and sleek in the archetypal modernist way, its case rooted in the polished curves of a sphere. Its countenance is jewel-like and delicate. Blancpain offers a seldom-used metric for timepiece size: the Lady B has a volume of 2.2 cubic centimetres. It is free of extraneous features. The dial is as simple as it gets, with gold applied stick indices, so the hand-polished geometry and the light it reflects are the main visual draw. It does not even have any lugs, with the strap disappearing into openings machined directly into the metal. Its monolithic visual simplicity belies technical complexity. It is no mean feat, for example, to make the gap between bezel and caseback all but disappear.
While its fundamental shape is timeless, the 1950s design language influence is immediately evident. Indeed, it is that era that Blancpain references. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Ladybird collection, itself an emblem of a remarkable era for the manufacture. Its original release was presided over by Betty Fiechter, the first woman to head a Swiss watch company, quite a feat given that women only gained voting rights in Switzerland in 1971. Fiechter joined the manufacture as an apprentice in 1912 at sixteen years old. In 1932, with the untimely death of Frederic-Emile Blancpain, the last seventh-generation family member to lead the company, she and commercial director Andre Leal secured financial backing and co-ownership. Leal’s passing on the eve of World War II left Fiechter solely at the helm. Her nephew, Jean-Jacques, joined the company in 1950 and they created the renowned Fifty Fathoms in 1953. In 1956, they heralded the manufacture’s other emblematic collection with the Ladybird Bullet. This watch boasted the R52/R55 calibre, remarkably small at only 11.85mm in diameter, yet including a shock protection system for the balance wheel. Blancpain claims that it is still the smallest round mechanical movement ever mass-produced.
The Lady B of today is pointedly not a reissue, but a contemporary reinterpretation. It is structured around a more modern movement: the self-winding Calibre 615, no quartz movements here, of course, not for Blancpain, measuring 15.7mm in diameter and 3.9mm in thickness, and possessing a 40-hour power reserve to go with its 3Hz beat rate and silicon balance spring. It is quite a workhorse for Blancpain, having been first introduced in 1995.
The Lady B is completed by a double-tour calf leather strap in one of six colours: white, light beige, dark beige, burgundy, classic blue, or fuchsia purple. It is offered in two options of case material, stainless steel (CHF9,500) and red gold (CHF14,500). It joins Blancpain’s selection of core offerings as a distinctive lynchpin of the manufacture’s ladies’ watch collection.
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