SVELTE DIVERS

Blancpain surprises everyone with 16 new references for the Fifty Fathoms, now in 38.2mm form

- WORDS KEN KE AND ASHOK SOMAN

With the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Automatique 38mm, the brand has finally given us the more restrained dive watch the community has been hankering for since the model returned to the fold in 2003.

Since that time, Blancpain has heard from us all that we wanted a more compact version of the Fifty Fathoms, one of two claimants to the title of “world's first dive watch." Sticking to its guns, Blancpain maintained that the Fifty Fathoms model was made for professionals in 1953 and thus could not be smaller than its 45mm size. Of course, that original model was 41mm so...

Barring some limited editions over the years, Blancpain has never given any indication that it would ever yield to persistent requests for a smaller diver. Even for women, who are an important part of the diving world. Well, we can all stop our bellyaching, as they say, because there are now a slew of Fifty Fathoms Automatique models to satisfy those consistent requests, and they are 38.2mm, to be precise. Now, we have to say that this was a bit of a wink-and-a-nod sort of drop from the brand, with the first two 38.2mm releases last week looking like standalone news. In fact, we wrote this entire story (for the most part) without knowing that more watches were on the way... One clue that more models were indeed coming was that the Internet reacted slowly, uncharacteristically, and the press site was wobbly.

On those two ladies' models revealed first, could either of these ostensibly made-for-her watches appeal to men? That is down to taste, of course, but – for the Singapore audience – we think one of these models would be good for SG60...