The term “OG” is bandied about by watch fans all too lightly. Granted, in a field defined by groundbreaking innovations and iconic designs, there’s no shortage of contenders for the title. Wait long enough and everything is OG, perhaps. But if there were, in dive watches, an OG of OGs, there’s a very solid case to be made for the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms.
For those not versed in nautical terminology, a fathom is a unit of depth equal to six feet. Fifty of those make 300 feet, which equates to 91.44 meters. It was that depth rating that gave the Fifty Fathoms its name when it debuted in 1953. This year, for its 70th birthday, Blancpain is celebrating with a series of special editions, the latest of which launched in late September in the waters of the Cote D’Azur.
The new watch is a rather mind-blowing addition to the long canon of Fifty Fathoms made in 9K bronze gold in an edition of just 555. The alloy consists of 37.5 percent 9K gold and 50 percent copper (which allows it to be defined as bronze), plus silver, gallium, and palladium. The composition of this rather unique version of bronze means that, unlike the traditional alloy, it is inert against the skin.
Though it maintains the original diameter of 41.30 mm, the watch is far from a nut-and-bolt recreation of the mil-spec Fifty Fathoms that inspired it. Numerous technical innovations mean that this is a modern watch through and through. The case is rated to 300 meters of water resistance, even with a sapphire crystal case back to allow the wearer to view the 114P.2 automatic movement. Double barrels allow a 100 hour power reserve, while a silicone hairspring mitigates magnetism. In a nod to current oceanographic preoccupations, the watch comes on a NATO strap made from recycled ocean-gathered fishing nets.
fifty fathoms Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary Act 3
fifty fathoms Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary Act 3
Some relevant backstory: Jean-Jacques Feichter, longtime CEO of Blancpain, was a passionate diver who made frequent visits to the Cote d’Azur, the unofficial ground zero of scuba diving, to dive the wrecks and reefs of the coast. According to company lore, the idea for the Fifty Fathoms was born from a near-fatal dive accident in which Feichter came close to running out of air. A regular waterproof watch was not sufficient to track dive time. It was here that Feichter hit on the idea of a lockable rotating bezel to mark the limit of oxygen reserves.
The watch was also built with a double watertight crown seal and a case strengthened against distortion of the O-ring gasket that sealed the case back, allowing it to withstand up to 300 feet of water pressure. Feichter added high-visibility markers on a black dial to make reading the time easier at depth and, later in the ‘50s, a moisture indicator to alert a diver to any condensation that might have crept into the case during a previous dive. While may famous divers hit the market around the same time, the Fifty Fathoms—which was adopted by a number of significant military diving teams in France, Germany, the USA, and beyond—was the first in which so many functional advances were united in one purpose-built watch.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Think of the Fifty Fathoms as the start—or end—of any serious dive watch collection.
Nick Sullivan is Creative Director at Equire, where he served as Fashion Director from 2004 until 2019. Prior to that, he relocated from London with his young family to Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. He has styled and art directed countless fashion and cover stories for both Esquire and Big Black Book (which he helped found in 2006) in exotic,uncomfortable, and occasionally unfeasibly cold locations. He also writes extensively about men’s style, accessories, and watches. He describes his style as elegantly disheveled.
