Blancpain has unveiled a new collection of classics from its popular Villeret range for Christmas. A marriage of technical refinement and aesthetic purity, Blancpain’s ultra-slim watch is set apart by its elegance and the technical accomplishments needed to create it. Reducing a movement’s thickness to a minimum while conserving its accuracy of operation has always been one of the greatest challenges facing the master watchmaker. In its ultra-slim watch, Blancpain achieves a work of art of remarkable balance.
Beneath its outward simplicity and elegance, this timepiece gives little indication of the technical obstacles overcome to devise a movement so breathtakingly slim. Naturally, the thinner a movement, the more fragile it is, so that its construction demands the highest degrees of skill and expertise.
Since the initial studies for the calibre 21 in 1925, Blancpain’s master watchmakers have never ceased to bring new technical improvements to the ultra-slim watch, making this movement, just 1.73 mm thick, one of the Manufacture’s proudest creations. Furthermore, this movement with other complications in combination has opened the way for the creation of the slimmest timepieces in their category. To name just one example, the calibre 21 associated with mechanism 56 has enabled the creation of the Villeret Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Slim Ladies’ model (calibre 5621) which, at 2.91 mm in thickness, is the world’s slimmest hand-wound perpetual-calendar watch. A black alligator strap completes the ensemble.
The Villeret Ultra Slim Champagne collection is now available at Blancpain’s Bond Street store in London.