For Baselworld 2018, Longines brings a few updates to one of its most iconic modern watches, the Legend Diver. Not only is now comes with a new and more performant movement, but mainly, it now available in full black – case, dial, strap. And while, here at MONOCHROME, we’re usually not huge fans of full black watches, this new Longines Legend Diver Black PVD has quite some appeal.
As you’ve probably seen through the live feed we provided to you, today was the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, also known as the Oscars of the Watchmaking Industry, celebrating the best watches (via 12 different categories, for 16 different prizes) of the year. While in 2016 the “Aiguille d’Or” (the prize for the best watch of the year) went to Ferdinand Berthoud and their superb FB1 watch. Well, if a brand can’t win twice in rough the GPHG, the “Aiguille d’Or” will, however, remain in the hands of the Scheufele family, as the winner of the GPHG 2017 is Chopard and the impressive Full Strike.
For the past few years, Longines has been quite active in the field of vintage reissues and vintage-inspired watches. In fact, there’s an entire collection named “Heritage”, full of watches that pay tribute to the rich past of the 185 years old brand. Some were just fine, some were highly desirable and some were rather disappointing (those date windows…) However, today, it seems that with the new Longines Avigation BigEye, we might have a solid package: a military-inspired pilot chronograph, with vintage flair, no-date display, balanced proportions, nice automatic movement and a very decent price…
Legend has it that at the beginning of the 20th century, Louis Cartier designed a wristwatch for aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont because of the inconvenience of using a pocket watch while flying. The Santos was one of the earliest wristwatches and pilot watches. Born out of practicality, the watches intended for pilots have evolved – in fact, the original Santos had very little to do with a flight ‘tool’ watch.
Except if you spent the last few weeks alone in some North-Pole cave, with no access to the World, you might have seen that France has a new President, in the name of Emmanuel Macron. No politics here, but as a watch magazine, the question of what type of watch Mister Macron could wear immediately came at the redaction. And knowing the Frenchies and their usual no external signs of wealth policy, it has been quite difficult… But we found out what can be, sometimes, on the wrist of Emmanuel Macron.
When one talks about interesting or extraordinary watches, it is usually the independents or the luxury watchmakers that comes into the conversation. It is not unusual, considering that many entry-level manufacturers do not produce watches that are either controversial in design, or timepieces that feature the high-end complications. …
With plain looks that belie the latest generation ETA quartz movement inside, the Conquest V.H.P. harks back to Longines‘ history as a maker of cutting edge electronic timing. The firm’s history in that field started with in 1954 Chronocinégines, a quartz timekeeper linked to a 1/100th of a second camera developed to capture athletes crossing the finishing line at sporting […]
Watch collectors (despite at times being possessed of geek-depth level of research and knowledge) is often prone to the same psychological quirks as any other average consumer. “In-house” is often just like any other criteria used to quantify a desirable, sometimes deeply technical object into a handful of easily digested…
Invented in the 1930s, long before the proliferation of commercially available jet travel, world time watches captured the imagination of its onlookers with its dial; displaying real time in key cities across the planet’s 24 time zones. From exotic locales like Rio de Janeiro and Tahiti, the genius of Geneva watchmaker Louis Cottier…
Today is officially the second day of the Lunar New Year, but the season of festive celebrations have just barely started. Traditionally, the celebrations last over 15 days, which means that there is effectively almost two weeks’ worth of festivities to go.…