A Hollywood mystery, a forgotten cocktail watch and a century-old birthday come together in a gem-set revival that feels surprisingly relevant today
When a watch brand mines its archives for inspiration, the result is often another heritage reissue. Blancpain’s new Ladybird Tribute is something rather more intriguing. Instead of revisiting one of its own catalogue classics, the Le Brassus Manufacture has recreated a watch that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe.
Released to mark the centenary of Monroe’s birth, the Ladybird Tribute is a capsule collection comprising seven unique pieces, each inspired by the diamond-set cocktail watch the actress owned in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The original surfaced at a 2016 auction and was subsequently acquired by Blancpain before making its public debut in New York three years later.
The historical piece is fascinating in its own right. Housed in an elongated platinum Art Deco case set with 71 diamonds, it captured the vertical architectural language of New York’s skyscraper age. Inside sat an FHF 59 baguette movement, a tiny calibre measuring just 0.85cm wide and 2.09cm long, bearing both Blancpain and Rayville signatures from a period when the manufacture was led by Betty Fiechter, one of Swiss watchmaking’s pioneering female executives.
Rather than produce a one-for-one reproduction, Blancpain has translated those codes into a contemporary jewellery watch. The new model retains the elongated rectangular silhouette, opaline dial, yellow-gold applied markers and conical hands of the original, while the architectural diamond setting remains a defining feature. The 35mm by 16mm white-gold case carries 85 diamonds totalling 1.36 carats and is paired with a double-wrap calfskin strap.
Collectors may be surprised to find that the mechanics receive almost as much attention as the gemstones. Visible through a sapphire caseback is Blancpain’s manually wound calibre 510, an in-house movement just 2.6mm thick. Operating at 21,600 vibrations per hour, the 128-component calibre delivers a respectable 52-hour power reserve.
The seven watches each carry a letter from the name M-A-R-I-L-Y-N engraved on the caseback and are paired with custom Pantone-developed strap colours ranging from Hot Pink and High Risk Red to the more restrained Star White and Golden Touch. Only one example of each exists.
