Blancpain Revives a 1968 Skin Diver for the Bathyscaphe’s 70th Birthday

Watch enthusiasts have spent the better part of a decade begging the big Swiss houses to build smaller watches, and as the trend towards smaller watches continues, we bound to see many more of our favorite legacy brands jump on board.

Now, the brand that invented the dive watch has joined the ranks, rolling out an iconic silhouette in a smaller format. Meet the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary.

The 1953 Fifty Fathoms gets all the glory, and deservedly so. It was built for combat divers and pretty much wrote the playbook on the modern dive watch. But in 1956, Blancpain released something for the rest of us. The Bathyscaphe was a smaller, cleaner take aimed at the recreational divers flooding into the hobby.

That civilian sibling turns 70 this year, and rather than modernize it into oblivion, Blancpain decided to go digging through their archives for inspiration. And they ended up on a 1978 reference as the template.

The stainless steel case measures 37.4mm across, 12.3mm thick, with a manageable 46.5mm lug to lug. The slim mid-case and sharp lugs are in tact from the original. The sunburst meteor grey dial carries the mid-century Blancpain logo, white gold baton markers filled with vintage-toned Super-LumiNova, and a charming arrow-tipped seconds hand.

There are some modern day updates here though as well. The unidirectional bezel swaps the original’s hesalite insert for scratch-proof ceramic, and water resistance holds at a legitimate 300 meters.

Where the 1968 watch wore a solid caseback, this one shows off the in-house Caliber 1150 through sapphire, complete with twin barrels, a silicon hairspring, and an absurd 100-hour power reserve.

The 18K rose gold rotor is the show stopper, and it’s openworked in the style of the original Fifty Fathoms’ oscillating weight. Each of the 300 casebacks is individually numbered.

The Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary is available now through Blancpain boutiques, priced at CHF 13,800 ($18,300 stateside), with each numbered piece shipping in its own Peli case. With only 300 examples on offer, we imagine it’ll go relatively quickly.

Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary

Blancpain marks 70 years of its civilian dive watch with a faithful 37.4mm recreation of a 1968 Bathyscaphe, limited to 300 numbered pieces.

Learn More: Blancpain