On the centennial of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, Blancpain unveils the Ladybird Tribute — a capsule of seven unique jewellery watches reinterpreted from the platinum cocktail piece she once owned
The watch had spent decades in the dark before anyone thought to look for it. Marilyn Monroe’s personal Blancpain—a platinum cocktail piece from the late 1940s or early 1950s—surfaced at a Julien’s Auctions sale in Los Angeles in 2016. Blancpain acquired it and, after showing it publicly for the first time in New York in 2019, the watch stopped collectors in their tracks.
Now, on the centennial of Monroe’s birth—she was born on 1 June 1926—Blancpain has returned to that original piece as the foundation for the Ladybird Tribute: a capsule of seven unique watches, each bearing one letter of the name MARILYN engraved on the caseback.
The original model is a study in American art deco geometry, featuring an elongated rectangular platinum case set with 71 brilliant-cut diamonds and two marquise stones. Inside runs a miniature baguette caliber measuring just 0.85 cm wide by 2.09 cm long—its mechanical prowess and dainty dimensions a fitting engine for the small timepiece that was nonetheless endowed with presence.
For the Ladybird Tribute, Blancpain watchmakers pay homage to the original by crafting the new iterations with the same opaline dial, yellow gold applied hour markers, and conical hands. Housed in an 18K white gold case measuring 35mm by 16 mm, the similarly diminutive new watch is lavished with more diamonds on the case this time: 85 stones totalling 1.360 carats, including marquise stones at the crown, and a single brilliant-cut on the pin buckle. The open caseback reveals the in-house Calibre 510, a manual-winding movement introduced in 2020 that delivers up to 52 hours of power reserve.
What distinguishes each of the seven pieces is the strap. Blancpain commissioned Pantone to develop seven exclusive colourways in response to Monroe’s visual universe—Peach Bud, High Risk Red, Black Beauty, Star White, Hot Pink, Golden Touch, and Dynasty Pink—each mounted as a double-wrap calf leather strap and corresponding to one letter of the collection’s governing word.
Priced at CHF 41,000 per piece, the The Ladybird Tribute is a rare treat—each of the seven watches honouring a life that the world has never quite gotten enough of.
