The moon has a face, and it is smirking
By Julien Moreau, Geneva ·
There is a particular kind of collector who will tell you, unprompted, that the moon on a Blancpain has lips. He is right, and he is usually wearing one. The smiling moon has been a Blancpain habit since the name was put back on its feet in the 1980s, and the complete calendar with moon phase was, quite deliberately, one of the complications chosen to rebuild the brand after quartz had flattened half the valley.
This 6654 is the modern heir to that idea, in steel, 40 mm across and 10.7 mm thick, which is properly slim for day, date, month and lunation all sharing one white dial. The date is read by a serpentine hand around the edge, day and month sit in twin windows under twelve, and the whole arrangement looks as though it was lifted from a 1940s catalogue. I mean that as a compliment. Blancpain also hid the correctors under the lugs, so you are spared the little stylus and the scratches that come with it, and the 72 hours of reserve mean it should still be running when you come back to it on Monday, which matters far more on a calendar than on a three-hander.
Now my quarrels. Thirty metres of water resistance is a polite fiction, so keep it away from the basin. And at roughly sixteen thousand dollars you are paying Blancpain prices for steel, when a good vintage triple-date from the 1950s would scratch much of the same itch for less and with better patina. If you want a complete calendar to wear with tweed and you like your moons with personality, buy it. If the face on the moon makes you wince in the boutique, it will make you wince every morning for the next twenty years.