CELEBRATING TWO DECADES OF FINE WATCHMAKING, LOUIS VUITTON HAS QUIETLY BECOME ONE OF THE INDUSTRY’S MOST EXCITING MARQUES
“The Tambour is the iconic shape of Louis Vuitton,” says Michel Navas from his office in Switzerland, via a patchy Zoom call. “It is the archetype. We launched it 20 years ago, and now we are celebrating the anniversary. But during these 20 years, you can see an evolution.” Navas is master watchmaker at La Fabrique du Temps — literally, “the time factory” — Louis Vuitton’s watch manufacture in Geneva. He is something of a legend in the watchmaking world — before LV, he developed tourbillons at Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Franck Muller, and worked with scores more of the industry’s leading names — so when he and watchmaking partner Enrico Barbasini joined forces with the luxury brand in 2011, it was something of a coup. What he and the team at La Fabrique du Temps have done since is perhaps more surprising still.
There had been occasional watches before — the Monterey II is a cult-worthy piece of watch design from the late Eighties, for example — but watchmaking at Louis Vuitton began in earnest in 2002. The first watch from the workshop, then in La Chaux-de-Fonds, was the Tambour, a 39.5mm stainless steel GMT automatic with an ETA 2893 movement. The round, flared case (like a drum, the meaning of the word “tambour”), compact, almost floating lugs and the 12 letters of “LOUIS VUITTON” serving as subtle hour markers set a design standard for the brand, and the watchmakers have played within that framework ever since.
Watchmaking at Louis Vuitton has blossomed impressively in the past 20 years. The back catalogue has various tourbillon pieces, skeletonised dials, jumping hour functions, floating movements, minute repeaters, monopusher chronographs… La Fabrique du Temps is akin to a watchmakers’ dream factory, where even the most audacious of ideas is seen through to completion. Take last year’s Tambour Carpe Diem, a 46.8mm minute repeater with the relief of a skull in
