Worn & Wound
Longines Reaches Back Nearly 100 Years for their Latest Heritage Release, the Pilot Majetek
Longines receives a lot of well deserved acclaim from the watch community for the tasteful way they recreate historical watches. They not only have a knack for getting the proportions and small details of these watches just right, but over the years they’ve been incredibly smart about the watches they select to reissue. Longines is essentially curating a living museum of watches that are important not just to their own brand history, but watch history writ large. Even if a particular reference is not to your taste, the fact these watches are out there preserving the brand’s heritage is important – it allows enthusiasts to really learn something about watch history, even if they never own the watch in question. Their first novelty of 2023 is a prime example of Longines teaching all of us a little bit about their past. The Longines Pilot Majetek is an uncommon pilot’s watch with a design that has roots in the 1930s. When we think of aviation watches, our minds probably go to simple designs rooted in pure legibility. The IWC Mark series, for example, provides something of a foundation for how we understand pilot watches today. Big numerals, plenty of lume, and generous proportions. For a time in the 1920s and 30s, however, pilot’s watches made by Longines were defined by a feature we now associate with a very different type of tool watch: a rotating bezel. These so-called “aviation counters” placed an emphasis on timing the duration of a flight, and used a sim...
