Anatomy of a Best-Selling Timepiece

Do you know what a bathyscaphe is? I didn't either At least not until I saw the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Day Date 70s watch at the Blancpain booth at Baselworld earlier this year and looked it up Popularized in the 1970s, the Bathyscaphe was reintroduced in 2013.

I've spoken to two prominent watch retailers in the past month and both have described this year's Bathyscaphe edition, a 43 mm vintage-looking wristwatch with a distinctive graduated taupe dial, as a best seller "The beauty of what Bathyscaphe did is that it brought a new client to our world," Andrade told me Like the Bathyscaphe models from the '70s, the contemporary reinterpretation features a silvered dial ring with rectangular indexes and Arabic numerals radially arrayed every five minutes and its day of the week and date indications at 3 o'clock.

Of all the factors behind the Bathyscaphe Day Date 70s' success, I'd say it's the combination of retro styling and innovative mechanics that has elevated the model to cult status. . More