Longines Flagship Heritage Collection Debuts New Dial Options for 2024

The Longines Flagship collection is one of the oldest in the Swiss brand’s portfolio, debuting in 1957 and long admired both for its understated, elegant style and its touch of artisanal charm, the latter represented by the gold, hand-painted medallion on its caseback, a longtime emblem of the collection. In 2023, the Flagship — now called the Flagship Heritage, as it settles firmly within Longines' overall series of vintage-inspired Heritage models — welcomed a technical and aesthetic upgrade to its core pieces, the addition of a moon-phase display. This week, Longines has unveiled the next series of Heritage Flagship watches in a trio of striking new dial colors: Havana beige, anthracite, and green.

Like their predecessors, the latest Flagship Heritage models feature sunray-finished dials with faceted Dauphine hands and applied, elongated hour markers that the brand has previously described as “coffin-shaped.” The Longines logo, with its historical winged hourglass, sits just below the 12 o’clock marker, while the aforementioned moon-phase display, framed by an analog date ring, occupies the position above 6 o’clock for a harmoniously balanced overall look. The dial has a slightly domed shape, another element hearkening back to the 1957 originals, and the hour markers and hands are plated in either rhodium or rose gold to match the color of the moon disk and stars on each model. 

The stainless steel case has a satin-brushed finish and offers suitably modest dress-watch dimensions, at 38.5mm in diameter and 12.4mm thick. Its shortened and chamfered lugs are designed for comfort on a variety of wrist sizes, and its screw-down caseback helps keep the watch water-resistant to 30 meters — again, suitably modest, but sufficient for a timepiece that’s unlikely to be worn for watersports. 

Since the original Flagship’s debut in 1957, the most noteworthy aspect of the caseback has been its embossed 18k gold medallion, adorned with a hand-painted enamel depiction of the model’s namesake, a naval flagship, set to full sail on a wavy blue sea. Creating these ornate badges is a meticulous process of artisanship, starting with a pre-colored enamel block that is reduced to powder by an agate pestle; this powder is mixed with water and then applied by hand to the gold base using a very fine-bristled paintbrush. At the completion of this process, the painted medallion is kiln-fired at 800º Celsius and then cooled, after which it undergoes the final steps of being stoned with a diamond file and polished to a gleaming finish before being set into the case. 

Beating behind the caseback’s medallion is a proprietary movement, the self-winding, ETA-based Longines Caliber L899.5, which holds a 72-hour power reserve. It is also equipped with a silicon balance spring that enables a resistance to magnetic fields (always an enemy to the accuracy of a watch with a mechanical movement and metal parts) that is 10 times greater than the ISO 764 standard met by other watch movements. Each of the new Flagship Heritage models comes mounted on a leather strap in a dial-matching color, which fastens to the wrist with a Heritage tongue buckle in steel. The price on all three of the watches is set at $3,050 — a steal, really, when one considers the work that goes into each individual caseback medallion.