Blancpain unveils seven Marilyn Monroe-inspired high-jewelry watches

Blancpain has transformed a real piece of Marilyn Monroe provenance into one of the season’s most seductive collector objects: seven unique Ladybird Tribute watches, each a high-jewelry reinterpretation of the Blancpain watch Monroe once wore. Unveiled on June 1, 2026, the centennial of Monroe’s birth, the project has the kind of emotional charge that makes a serious watch feel like a deeply considered gift rather than a purchase.

The appeal starts with the original. Blancpain acquired Monroe’s watch in 2016 after it resurfaced at a Julien’s Auctions sale in Los Angeles tied to the legacy of Lee Strasberg, the Actors Studio director and custodian of part of Monroe’s personal effects. The house later showed it publicly for the first time in October 2019 at New York’s Timeless Elegance exhibition. Likely produced in the late 1940s or early 1950s, the piece carried an elongated rectangular Art Deco case, a rectangular opaline dial, yellow-gold applied hour markers, a vertically stretched Blancpain logo, and a double safety chain bracelet. It was crafted in platinum 950, set with 71 brilliant-cut diamonds and two marquise diamonds, and powered by an FHF 59 miniature baguette movement with a double signature.

The new Ladybird Tribute watches keep that old-Hollywood silhouette intact, but sharpen it into a more opulent gesture. Each of the seven pieces contains 85 diamonds totaling 1.360 carats, including 60 brilliant-cut diamonds, two marquise diamonds on the 18-karat white-gold case, 20 brilliant-cut diamonds on the links, two diamonds on the arch attachments, and one diamond on the pin buckle. Blancpain also retained the opaline dial, yellow-gold hour markers, conical hands, and Art Deco rectangular case, a design language that nods directly to American skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and the Empire State Building.

For the collector who wants the gift to feel singular, the details do the work. Each watch is engraved on the caseback with one letter of MARILYN, and each comes on a double-wrap calf strap in one of seven Pantone-developed centennial colors: Peach Bud, High Risk Red, Black Beauty, Star White, Hot Pink, Golden Touch, and Dynasty Pink. That color treatment gives the collection a modern giftable flourish without softening its provenance.

Inside, Blancpain used its in-house Caliber 510, a manual-winding movement introduced in 2020 that measures 2.60 mm thick and offers a 52-hour power reserve. The result is not just a tribute to Monroe’s glamour, but a watch that feels like a wearable archive of mid-century Hollywood, one that connects Monroe, Betty Fiechter’s Rayville-Blancpain era, and contemporary high jewelry in a form rare enough to matter.