It’s The 70th Anniversary of the Blancpain Ladybird – Blancpain Celebrates With The New ‘Lady B’

Sometimes fame and recognition for your work can be a long, slow burn. Certainly, this is the case for Berthe-Marie Fiechter, Betty to her friends and family, who was responsible for turning Blancpain into a successful supplier of movements to both the Swiss and American watch industries during the period in which she owned the company and acted as its director. With a partner, Fiechter took over the company from Frédéric-Emile Blancpain, who was the last member of the family to own the company. She was born in 1896 in Villeret, and she started at Blancpain as an apprentice in 1912 at the age of sixteen, joining the company full time after Blancpain bought her father’s movement company.

She became a personal assistant to Frédéric-Emile in 1915, and, after the war, after Frédéric-Emile’s daughter showed no interest in taking over from her father, she and her partner André Léal, whom she had met during World War I, decided with the family’s blessing to acquire Blancpain. After the death of Frédéric-Emile, she and Léal, Blancpain’s commercial director, went heavily into debt in order to purchase Blancpain in 1933. Léal was killed in a road accident, just before the beginning of World War II, in 1939, and from that point on, Betty Fiechter ran the company alone, until being joined by her nephew, Jean-Jacques Fiechter, in 1950.

After Frédéric-Emile’s death, Swiss law forbade the company from calling itself Blancpain, so the company was renamed Fabrique d’Horlogerie Rayville S.A. and registered as Rayville S.A., successeur de Blancpain, which meant at least that the Blancpain name could still be used on the dials. (Rayville is of course, an anagram for Villeret). One of the company’s greatest successes and the key to its survival all the way up to the Quartz Crisis, was its capacity as a movement supplier, and one of its most niche movements was the original Ladybird caliber, an extremely small movement just 11.85mm in diameter. This movement was launched commercially by Blancpain in 1956, in an unusual, spherical-cased watch: the Ladybird Bullet. The movements were calibers R52/R55, and R520/R550, with crowns on the either the side or the back respectively.

In 1961, Blancpain became part of the conglomerate, SSIH (Société Suisse pour l’Industrie Horlogère) and in its heyday the company was a major supplier of movements to brands like Omega and Tissot; the Ladybird calibers were used by brands like Omega and Longines, since its extremely small size made it ideal for jewelry and ladies’ watches. The creation of exceptionally small movements was not exactly new to watchmaking at that time – watchmakers had been making movements small enough to fit into rings, for instance, since the mid-16th century – but these were essentially novelties, albeit extremely expensive ones, and the Ladybird calibers were exceptional not only for their small size, but also for their relative reliability and robustness, as well as the fact that they could be mass produced. Running at 3Hz/21,600 vph, the Ladybird calibers had a modified gear train to improve efficiency, which included an additional fifth wheel in the going train, and unusually for such small calibers, it also had antishock protection.

After Betty Fiechter passed away in 1971, and during the Quartz Crisis, Blancpain’s manufacturing capacity was absorbed into Omega completely by 1980, with its last exhibition at Baselworld taking place in 1975. but the dormant name was acquired by Jacques Piguet, then-owner of the manufacturer F. Piguet, and Jean-Claude Biver, in 1983. The two set out to create high grade watches using ultra-thin and complicated F. Piguet calibers. In 1992, the partners sold the revived and rising brand, as well as F. Piguet, to SMH, which would become the Swatch Group in 1998. Here, the story of the Ladybird picks up again. The automatic caliber 615 was introduced in 1995 shortly after both Blancpain and F. Piguet were acquired, and the movement – with a designed upgraded periodically between then and today – was like its predecessors, extremely small (the original Ladybird calibers were the smallest series produced round movements in watchmaking history) coming in at 15.70 mm in diameter and 3.90 mm in thickness. The caliber 615 was in turn based on a previous hand-wound F. Piguet ultra-small movement, the caliber 610 from 1992.

At just 15.70mm x 3.90mm, the 615 is one of the smallest automatic movements ever made, and despite its small size, it still offers a 38 hour power reserve at 21,600 vph. This allows the new Lady B. models to be extremely small as well, but it’s not just the size, although that too is remarkable – the Lady B. watches are spherical with a flattened surface for the crystal and dial, and have a flattened back to fit better on the wrist, coming in at 19mm x 13.20mm, with an internal volume of 2.9 cubic centimeters.

The name, Lady B., is a shoutout on several levels; to the original “Bullet” from 1956, but also to Betty Fiechter; it stands for Blancpain, and it also stands for “bijou” – “jewel” in French. The spherical design is extremely unusual, for obvious reasons, and if you want a spherical watch to also be a small diameter design piece with a mechanical movement, you obviously need a movement which will fit the bill, which the caliber 215 certainly does. The strap passes through the case, so there’s no display back, and although it’s perhaps a pity not to be able to see the movement, I think a display back would, while nice in itself, detract somewhat from the purity of the design.

Aside from the fact that this is an unusual and very sophisticated watch – I can’t offhand think of another modern luxury dress watch that combines a modified sphere with a very small diameter and an automatic mechanical movement – it’s also, as I think Blancpain intends it to be, a way of building some connective tissue between its present, and the period between the acquisition of Blancpain by Léal and Feichter and the quartz crisis. Feichter faced a number of challenges during her tenure, including the Great Depression, World War II, and the untimely death of Léal, who was her romantic partner as well as her business partner, to say nothing of the fact that a woman brand director in Switzerland was unheard of; women in Switzerland did not get the Federal vote until 1971. Her leadership and the force of character that sustained Blancpain through these challenges is a part of not only the history of the company, but also the history of Swiss watchmaking, and offers lessons in both imagination and ingenuity under duress which seem especially apt today.

The Blancpain Lady B. watches are available in stainless steel or 18k red gold. Cases, 19.0mm x 13.20mm, water resistant to 30 meters; two piece construction with integrated slip-through bracelet construction. Movement, Manufacture Blancpain caliber 615, automatic, 15.70mm x 3.90mm, running in 29 jewels at 21,600 vph; power reserve, 38 hours. Calf leather double length strap, available in white, beige, mocha, burgundy, blue, or purple. Non-limited production; prices, $12,600 in stainless steel, and $19,200 in red gold. 

The 1916 Company is proud to be an authorized retailer for Blancpain watches. Please contact us for current pricing and availability.