Teddy Baldassarre
Longines Conquest 38 Review
Last year, Longines relaunched the Conquest, a mainstay of its collection since the mid-1950s, in a new execution heavily influenced by its earliest vintage forebears and staking out a dressier territory than its sporty dive-watch sibling, the Hydroconquest. Longines set out to expand the new Conquest’s appeal this year with a new series of models in unisex 38mm cases. Read on for a hands-on review of the new Conquest 38 with an effervescent champagne dial. Longines, founded in 1832 in the Jura valley of Switzerland, where it remains headquartered today, can claim a variety of milestones in its long history, including one that is largely overlooked. In the 1950s, Longines became one of the first watchmakers to introduce product “families,” today a staple of the watch industry; the first was the Conquest collection, whose name was registered on April 3, 1954 with the Swiss Registry of Intellectual Property and which launched that same year. Like just about any timepiece well past the half-century mark on the market, the Conquest has evolved substantially over the decades since. The first Conquest (Heritage re-edition pictured above) was a model of midcentury masculine simplicity, and one of the first wristwatches notable for its high levels of waterproofness and magnetic resistance. Its steel case measured a modest (but at the time standard) 35.2mm and fastened via wide, chamfered lugs to a leather strap. Its champagne-colored dial had arrowhead-style notched indexes ...
