Longines Baselworld 2011 Novelties

Longines, the insider’s choice among the Swatch Group brands, is again showing several interesting and attractive novelties. The flag ship of its 2011 collection is the Master Moon Phase with retrograde indications. Common with the general design of the Master collection, the watch has a silver-colored and stamped dial, Roman numerals and blued hands. More conspicuous are the two retrograde indications at 3 and 9, which are a 24 hours display (at 9) and a calendar (at 3). Two further retrograde hands inform on the day of the week (at 12) and the small second (at 6). Additionally, the watch features a moon phase and a day/night indicator.


Overall, the dial appears a bit cluttered by all these retrograde indications, apart from the impossibility for all people over 40, to read the narrowly printed scales of the 24 hours and especially the date without the help of reading glasses or, better even, a loupe. Despite its impracticability, the watch looks great. Longines also offers a black dial variant. Apparently, the movement in use is a modified Valgranges.


Already last year, Longines presented a nice column-wheel chronograph, which, however, failed to reach the dealers since. While the exact nature of the technical problems responsible for the delay was not disclosed, the manufacturer now claims them to be solved, and the watch with the selfwinding column-wheel chronograph movement should be available soon. This year, a nice new variant was shown, with the designation “Record”, and a rather rarely seen design feature: a so-called Nonius-scale, attached to the chronograph second hand permits to read the exact fraction of a second; maybe not really practical to use, but nevertheless funny.


However, my personal highlight from Longines this fair is the so-called Twenty-Four Hours, an automatic watch with 24 hours display. Continuing the Heritage series, this watch replicates an old navigation watch worn by pilots and navigators of Swiss airlines. With a diameter of 47.5mm it is rather large, facilitating the reading of the times on the 24 hours dial. The nostalgic, pear-shaped hands are rhodium-plated and have a small amount of luminous mass. Winding and setting is done by means of the massive, onion-shaped crown, aside which is a small push-button, which opens the steel lid above the caseback. The latter reveals the sight onto the large Valgranges movement, which is decorated with stripes and perlage. All in all, the watch is flawlessly executed, and a really conspicuous piece, not alone because of its size. Its (Swiss) list price of about 3,000 Francs is not really small, however.


For the ladies, Longines shows a facelifted version of its well-known Dolce Vita series. As seen with other brands already, bicolor seems to become increasingly popular. For many years, the combination of steel with gold was considered flashy. Now, combined with pink rather than yellow gold, bicolor is an appropriate means to compensate the exploded gold prices, while retaining a more luxury flair than pure steel would have. I think that the Dolce Vita profits a lot from the new look.


Another really nice watch is the Diamond Conquest, the ladies’ version of a traditional Longines product line. What makes this variant unique is its combination of steel with either white or black ceramic. With additional diamonds on bezel and dial, these already highly attractive watch look even more feminine.


This message has been edited by Marcus Hanke on 2011-04-18 10:05:58 This message has been edited by Marcus Hanke on 2011-04-21 00:42:21