Longines DolceVita watches

The Longines DolceVita is the brand's family of rectangular watches, created in 1997. Its blueprint was a Longines watch of 1927, released exactly 70 years before the line appeared. The shape goes back further still: Longines was making and selling rectangular watches by the 1910s, and they became popular in the decades that followed, as the Art Deco movement encouraged more experimental case shapes.

The rectangular case, taken from a 1920s model, is what defines the line. Longines gave the DolceVita its first reinterpretation in 2015. Some versions carry a sectorised dial in the Art Deco manner, with silver tones, Arabic numerals and cross hairs, as on the Dolce Vita 27.7 Automatic (L5.757.4.73.3) with its silver sector dial.

The quartz models are named by a number. The narrow cases run from the DolceVita 16 and 17.4 through the DolceVita 20, 20.5, 20.8 and 22 to the 23 mm DolceVita 23, and the DolceVita 26 comes in a 26.3 mm case as either a Quartz or an Automatic. The chronographs are the DolceVita 28 Quartz Chronograph at 27.8 mm, the DolceVita 30 Quartz Chronograph at 30 mm and the DolceVita XL Chronograph, which shares its 33.9 mm case with the three-hand DolceVita XL.

Cases are stainless steel, steel with yellow or pink gold, or solid yellow or pink gold, under a sapphire crystal. Dressier versions add a diamond-set bezel or a mother-of-pearl dial; the plainer ones keep white, black, silver or beige dials with Roman or Arabic numerals.