There’s a particular kind of magic that happens when a heritage brand stops behaving politely.
Serge Manzon - (Image Instagram)
In 1973, Longines did exactly that, handing the reins, briefly and boldly, to French artist Serge Manzon. What emerged was a collection that feels less like watchmaking and more like wearable sculpture pulled from a different timeline. Manzon, active in the late 1960s and 1970s, worked across furniture, lighting, jewelry, and watches with a distinctly sculptural sensibility, favoring bold, exaggerated forms and fluid, organic shapes that feel primitive yet architectural.
Serge Manzon-designed watches - (Image by Relojes Especiales)
Presented at Basel in 1973, the collection broke cleanly from the brand’s classical DNA. These weren’t elegant dress watches or measured sports pieces. They were sculptural objects, 11 unisex watches in total. Fluid, sometimes brutal, often unsettling. Silver cases stretched, compressed, and curved in ways that felt closer to industrial design or contemporary art than traditional horology. Bracelets became architecture. Crosshair dials receded, secondary to form. Produced peak-Quartz Crisis, some styles were electronic, some not.
There’s something undeniably modern about them. Not retro — modern. The kind of severe, sculptural energy you might associate with Paris-based fashion designer Rick Owens today: stark, monolithic, a little alien. Beauty, but with a touch of the dark side. Four examples now surfacing at Analog:Shift capture that bold spirit perfectly — each one an adaptation or fragment of a larger idea, rare, slightly mysterious, and entirely unconcerned with convention. They don’t try to charm you. They challenge you.
Longines by Serge Manzon - SHOP HERE
And that’s precisely why they feel so right in 2026. As collecting evolves, a clear divide emerges. There’s a type of collector who looks at these and immediately understands — and plenty who simply won’t. No explanation needed. No justification offered. Because at this level, it’s no longer just about specs or history. It’s about animal instinct. About being drawn to objects that feel like statements, like living artifacts. Things you wear not because they fit neatly into a category, but because they refuse to.
The Serge Manzon Longines pieces sit right at that intersection. A reminder that even the most established names in watchmaking have, at times, taken real risks. The kind of thinking worth revisiting — and maybe, finally, understanding.
