Longines Flagship Collection

At its launch in 1957, Longines’ Flagship collection quickly made waves the world over, buoyed by what for the period were definitely unusual features.

Their remarkably slim, sleek case lines housed Longines’ legendary L30 hand-wound mechanical movement, soon followed by the no less accomplished L380 self-winding design–benefiting in both cases from exceptional protection against shocks, jarring and magnetic fields.

The Longines Flagship collection’s cool classic elegance and general horological excellence assured it in its day of an unusually long and successful worldwide career, fondly remembered ever since. While the comeback of the Flagship is good news indeed, it hardly qualifies as a surprise by reason both of its distinguished past and promising future. Longines has meticulously prepared its relaunch, making very sure that the collection’s style and spirit truly caught the mood of the world’s consumers of the early 21st century. Here again, Longines’ design flair and marketing expertise have worked wonders.

The first thing that strikes the eye is the collection’s superbly styled stainless steel designs. Slim, sleek cases in the best Flagship tradition display fine circular grooving on the bezel and on the back a medallion of a tall ship in full sail—save where the presence of a gleaming self-winding mechanical movement calls for a transparent sapphire back plate. The case frames a white, grey or black dial enhanced with applied hour markers, optionally featuring a seconds hand.

Worldwide appeal

Appealing to consumers the world over, the Longines Flagship collection was structured from the start in five practical sizes, from mini up to men’s chronograph. The substitution of a fine leather strap for the smoothly articulated stainless steel link bracelet also adds to the collection’s range of attractive choices.

From a purely technical point of view, the current Longines Flagship collection naturally features both quartz movements and self-winding mechanical constructions, including one of the latter equipping a woman’s model – a welcome feature in a collection designed for broad-spectrum appeal to consumers everywhere, often with very different expectations and tastes. There’s also a self-winding chronograph that’s sure to please both timing specialists and aficionados of fine traditional horology.

An exceptional Longines design: the VHP movement

A highly regarded technical achievement, Longines’ VHP quartz movement is making its own comeback in the Flagship collection. It features an exclusive, highly ingenious thermal compensation system that automatically compensates for temperature variations every eight minutes – the key to the impressive accuracy its name (Very High Precision) suggests:  a rate precision to within about 10 seconds per year! But as if this wasn’t enough, the collection’s man-sized VHP design also comes with a perpetual calendar programmed to adjust automatically to all leap years until 2099.

Compelling advantages

Clean, easy-to-read dial faces, sleek shapes and silhouettes whose simple elegance blends easily with every fashion and style, a wide choice of case sizes  compatible with every wrist, from slim to brawny, dependable quartz and self-winding mechanical movements and more... the Flagship collection has obviously been designed from the start for very universal appeal.

Yet thanks to its extensive international marketing experience, Longines has done even better than that. Flagship prices come as a surprise— and a very pleasant one at that! This where the company’s membership in the Swatch Group, the world’s largest maker and marketer of time products, makes especial sense. With direct access to suppliers, support structures and invaluable resources of every kind, Longines watchmakers are uniquely positioned to turn out collections as attractive as Flagship, with marketing appeal rivaling its design and technological advantages.

So the Longines Flagship collection is now steady on course towards discerning consumers on every continent, men and women whose taste is equaled only by their flair.

Longines is a member of Swatch Group Ltd, the world’s leading watch manufacturer and marketer, with no fewer than 157 production sites in Switzerland.