Teddy Baldassarre
Blancpain Swatch Review
The origin of Blancpain x Swatch is the story of two vastly different watchmakers. One is the oldest watch brand in the world, in existence since 1735, and renowned for making some of the most high-end luxury timepieces in the industry, regularly carrying prices of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. The other traces its origins only to the 1980s and made its name by producing plastic-cased, mass-market fashion watches for youthful consumers at average prices around $300. Through a convoluted series of events arising from watch-industry upheavals in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the newbie department-store brand bought the historical prestige brand, making it part of a modern-day Murderers Row of legacy watchmakers within what is now known as the Swatch Group. Both brands continued to do what they did best, and never did their efforts really intersect. Blancpain has adhered to its philosophy of never, in its almost-300-year history, making a watch with a quartz movement. Swatch, by contrast, was the brand that brought quartz into the mainstream of Swiss watchmaking in the first place, and still uses quartz movements in most (but not all) of its voluminous output of watches. But the watchword (no pun intended) of the 21st Century timepiece industry seems increasingly to be, Never Say Never. The Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch (Obviously) Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch "Mission On Earth" In 2022 came a scenario that was somehow both unthinkable and inevitable at the same ...
