Blancpain presents an innovative timepiece within its core women’s collection, the Day Night, which showcases the brand’s DNA for technical innovation and design acumen.

Once more Blancpain has demonstrated its savoir-faire in watchmaking. This time around, it’s through a new addition to its core ladies’ collection, called the Day Night.

The Day Night certainly manages to distinguish itself from the rest of the collection with substantial technical innovations and fine craftsmanship. To begin with, it features a new caliber that was created especially for its women’s collection. Based on the caliber 1150, the movement of the Day Night is larger in diameter, with a 40 mm case. But it’s still slim and feminine, being less than 12 mm thick.

Through this complication, Blancpain has also perfected the design of retrograde indications with the help of snail shaped cams, which are put to great use in this watch. One of the unique features of this piece is the way that two retrograde indications, for seconds and hours, are combined with the minute hand. The minute is displayed with a regulator hand which continuously sweeps over its circle of rotation. As it completes its 60 minute march, the second hand retrogrades, meaning that it has progressed along its arc and returns instantly to its point of departure, to begin the journey all over again. Similarly, the hour hand retrogrades twice per day, again in synch with the minute hand.

But the most arresting feature of this watch is the Day Night disc, which rotates slowly (over the course of four minutes) twice per day, providing ample time to enjoy all the decorative details of the Day and Night scenes. A number of artistic techniques are employed in their creation: décalque, champlevé, marquetry, gem-setting (the moon is made up of 50 diamonds, the sun is fashioned out of 50 yellow sapphires), and gradations of blue deposited on mother-of-pearl to differentiate day and night.

To top it off, Blancpain’s signature design elements, including a double stepped case with rounded shoulders, are found in this timepiece. The bezel is set with two spiral shaped rows of 140 diamonds around its exterior. The dial is fashioned entirely in mother of pearl on a base of German silver, and is divided into three parts on four levels. The difference in height creates an impression of great depth, which subtly evokes the contrasts created by the day-night motif of the watch.