The Longines Saint-Imier Collection

The brand is celebrating Saint-Imier, a Swiss village famous for its watches and also this watchmaker’s hometown

Saint-Imier has been the hometown of Longines since 1832. Breitling was also founded in this village, but it shifted base to Grenchen. That makes Longines the only watchmaking company that was set up and still remains in this Jura mountain village. Right from the firm’s early days, the fates of Longines and the village of Saint-Imier have been closely interwoven. Longines is celebrating this relationship with its Saint-Imier Collection, a range of mechanical movement timepieces that reflect the legacy of watches that have sprung up from this area. Since the 1830s, when Longines set up base here, the village has become a watchmaking hub. Longines, of course, has spun its own success story.

The classical shape of the case of these watches is a common theme throughout the collection, inspired by a model dating from 1945. The sleek lines and distinctive lugs provide these new models with a subtle balance between classical and contemporary design.

Shown here is a chronograph from the collection. It has a 41 mm case in steel and rose gold, with a silvered dial. The watch is also available with a black dial. It shows hours, minutes and small seconds at 9 o’clock. There is a date aperture as well as chronograph functions: a centre sweep seconds, a 30-minute counter at 3 o’clock and a 12-hour counter at 6 o’clock. The chronographs have steel or steel-and-rose-gold bracelets or black or brown alligator straps, all with a folding safety clasps. The timepiece is powered by the self-winding mechanical column-wheel movement L688, developed and produced exclusively for Longines.

Other models offer complications such as day/night displays and phases of the moon. All the models in this collection boast of mechanical movements whose intricate workings can be seen through transparent sapphire back covers.

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