BLANCPAIN Fifty Fathoms TOURBILLON 8 JOURS

Blancpain’s flagship diver’s model, the historic, the legendary Fifty Fathoms is once again home to one of the manufacture’s most sophisticated mechanical complications – a flying tourbillon! 

This is the new Fifty Fathoms Tourbillon 8 Jours (days) diver's watch; the place where the underwater and haute horological worlds come to play.

Powered the self-winding Blancpain Calibre 25C with its flying tourbillon, swirling from within the dial like some sort of mechanical whirlpool in a sun-drenched ocean of blue – 

it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to the casual dive watch enthusiast but if Blancpain were looking for a safe place for such a movement there could be none better.

Introduced in 2007, the modern Fifty Fathoms collection has taken a bit of back seat to the Bathyscaphe which has gained in popularity while the OG-styled FF has seemingly dropped out of favor. I’d guess that this new tourbillon-powered FF won’t do much to address the balance but nevertheless it’s still an impressive creation that is worthy of our attention.

The new model comes in either a lightweight Titanium GRADE 23 version or in a luxurious red gold variant both are equally spectacular in terms of how they look and how expensive they are. 

Prices btw start from approx. 115’000 (Ti on NATO) to approx. 135’000 (RG) Swiss Francs.

The tourbillon, known as flying as it lacks an upper bridge to drive its cage, has the appearance of floating. It can be found in the large circular aperture cut into the sunburst blue dial at 12 o'clock.

Meanwhile for the 45mm-diameter, satin-finished case of this new Fifty Fathoms, delivered in Grade 23 Titanium or Red Gold – it is business as usual with 300 meters of water-resistance. 

In addition to the above, as a Fifty Fathoms based on the OG model from the ‘50s, the watch has a unidirectional diver’s bezel with a sapphire inlay.

Btw the sapphire bezel inlay was a Blancpain innovation dating back almost 15yrs. Further diver’s features include a screw-down crown and solid G23 Ti (or RG) case-back with a sapphire exhibition window for marveling at the highly complex and decorated Cal. 25C.

The titanium model is available with a blue NATO or sailcloth strap, as well as a titanium bracelet; the red gold watch comes with a blue NATO or sailcloth strap. 

For both models, the sailcloth strap can be combined with a pin buckle or folding clasp, as desired.

Thoughts? This new model is quite a departure from the military diving instrument created by pioneering scuba-diver, Jean-Jacques Fiechter back in 1953. 

He might well turn in his grave at the thought of how his military diving tool has evolved to become this high-end trinket created for luxury watch market! 

But what do you think? Isn’t about time that the Fifty Fathoms returned to its humbler beginnings?