Teddy Baldassarre
Omega Constellation Guide
The Omega Constellation is not only the Swiss luxury brand’s oldest collection (if we’re tracing the Seamaster back to its first “Professional” dive-watch model in 1957); it’s also the dressiest, with a design heritage that hinges on two classic and very iconoclastic watches from two distinctively different eras: the cult-classic original from the 1950s and the influential revamp in the 1980s. Here’s an in-depth look at the Omega Constellation, its half-century-plus of revolutionary design, and what the collection looks like today. 1952: Making a Pie Omega, founded in 1848 by an ambitious young Swiss watchmaker named Louis Brandt, celebrated its 100th anniversary in the postwar year of 1948. The most memorable watch the company released during that milestone year, most would agree, was the first Seamaster, which introduced the innovative waterproof system that would give rise to today’s sprawling Seamaster Professional collection of dive watches. A rarer and more obscure timepiece introduced that year was the Centenary, Omega’s first chronometer-certified wristwatch. An iconoclastic gold dress watch, highly limited in production, the Centenary took its name from the 100-year anniversary it commemorated and its design would provide the template of a collection that would debut several years later, in 1952, called the Constellation. (Both the Seamaster and the Centenary, incidentally, were the brainchildren of watch designer René Bannwart, who would go on to...
