The Longines Spirit Gets the Bucherer BLUE Treatment

When Bucherer bought out the Tourneau chain of watch retail stores in 2018, it set in motion a process which is just now culminating in a transformation of one of the key watch retailers in the United States. The iconic Tourneau TimMachine location in New York City was recently reopened under the Bucherer name, and with it comes a very different shopping experience, designed to be more, well, experiential. Multiple floors of comfy furniture, full service bars, and of course plenty of watches to try on await customers, even if they’re just kicking the proverbial tires on a purchase, or have a desire just to learn about the latest watch releases. Along with the Bucherer rebranding, though, comes a whole new class of products with the Bucherer name attached to them that were previously only available at their European locations. The Bucherer BLUE line consists of popular watches from large brands rendered in Bucherer’s unique blue tone, and in this climate of collaborations between brands, retailers, beer companies, and so forth, they’re definitely worth talking about. Today we’ll look specifically at a couple of watches from the Longines Spirit line that have been given the BLUE treatment. 

The Spirit of course is the newest aviation inspired collection from Longines, and represents something fairly ambitious for the brand. Longines, like a lot of Swiss brands with a deep heritage, has leaned heavily on vintage inspired watches in recent years as they’ve taken off in popularity. Longines has consistently been one of the best practitioners of this type of watchmaking, displaying impeccable taste as they look to their archives, and creating new versions of classics that their customers genuinely want to wear, often executed with only minimal concessions to what we expect a modern watch to be. The Spirit is something else entirely: an entirely original Longines design language, not based on any particular reference, that seeks to take the classic pilot’s watch and bring it up to date through a Longines specific lens. They’re solid, satisfying watches, and we were particularly big fans of the recent titanium addition to the collection (be sure to check out Zach W’s review of the first time and date Spirit right here).

The Bucherer BLUE editions come in two flavors. First, the Longines Spirit Automatic Bucherer BLUE, a no date execution of the simplest Spirit with a clean black dial, white lume filled Arabic numerals, and a black coated case measuring 40mm. The blue here is fairly minimal, and limited to an accent border around the minutes track, and the five stars on the dial denoting the movement’s chronometer status. It’s the contrast between the black and blue elements that makes this watch pop, and it feels immediately more contemporary than the any Spirit that Longines has released previously. 

Next up is the Spirit Chronograph Bucherer BLUE, with a case that’s been upsized to 42mm but otherwise maintains the same black/blue/white motif. The chronograph benefits from some additional dial complexity thanks to the radial finishing within the chrono sub registers, providing some interesting texture contrasts. 

The new Bucherer BLUE Longines Spirits are available now through the Tourneau-Bucherer website, and also at the new Bucherer 1888 Time Machine Store in New York. The time only Automatic has a retail price of $2,900, and the chrono comes in at $3,700. In addition to these new references from Longines, you’ll also find Bucherer BLUE editions from Breitling, Blancpain, Oris, and others. Longines