Louis Vuitton may be more well-known for its high fashion than its high horology, but it has been designing and debuting ambitious timepieces with impressive frequency for over a decade. Ever since the maison’s 2011 acquisition of La Fabrique du Temps—the facility founded by veteran watchmakers Enrico Barbasini and Michel Navas, it has maintained a dizzying pace of innovation, creating complicated masterworks from minute repeaters to automatons, some of which have claimed prestigious awards at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.
But Louis Vuitton is by no means new to watchmaking; in fact, it has been producing timepieces since the late 1980s. In partnership with Italian designer and architect Gae Aulenti—who transformed Paris’s Gare d’Orsay train station into the Musée d’Orsay—it released the LV I and LV II in 1988. These references were standouts in several respects: Their pebble-like, lugless cases with a 12 o’clock crown were reminiscent of vintage pocket watches, while their dials offered world time, G.M.T., and date display (LV I) or date and time plus an alarm function (LV II). Originally, both watches were powered not by hand-finished mechanical movements, but by then-trendy quartz calibers.
Image courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Produced in white or yellow gold or black or green ceramic, the watches were nicknamed Monterey, a play on the English pronunciation of “montre” (French for “watch”). Though Louis Vuitton would go on to launch the Tambour collection in 2002, the LV I and LV II remain the truly collectible “vintage” or “neo-vintage” LV wristwatches, especially as new generations of young watch fans are discovering them for the first time on the wrists of celebrities or via major auctions.
Image courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Now, the brand has reissued this classic silhouette, updating it for the modern collector with in-house savoir faire. And it even has an official new name: the Louis Vuitton Monterey. Housed within a 39 mm yellow-gold case with a specially widened and notched crown at 12 o’clock, it features a white grand feu enamel dial with a simplified display. This time-only readout is emphasized by red and blue railroad minute tracks, black Arabic indices, and the model’s signature skeletonized-syringe hands in red lacquer with a blued-steel seconds hand. Requiring over 20 hours of fabrication time, this lustrous dial is produced via the application of numerous layers of vitreous enamel and multiple firings in a kiln measuring between 800 degrees and 900 degrees Celsius. It’s a major upgrade from the simpler lacquered dials of the originals.
Image courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Beneath its elevated new face is an equally notable mechanism. In lieu of quartz, the Monterey is now equipped with the automatic Calibre LFTMA01.02. Produced in-house at La Fabrique du Temps, its circular-grained mainplate, sandblasted bridges, and micro-blasted edges are evidence of the attention to detail. An 18-karat-rose-gold winding rotor provides 45 hours of power reserve and a beat rate of 28,800 vibrations per hour, while a simple black calf-leather strap with an 18-karat-yellow-gold pin buckle finishes the elegant package. Of course, bringing both an important historical model (as well as a 1980s classic) into the 2020s is no easy feat. But if the reception that Louis Vuitton’s modern horological output has been receiving lately is any indication, this pared-back Monterey is on track to elicit broad approval.
Oren Hartov covers the watch industry for Robb Report, GQ, Esquire, MONOCLE, and more. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music and a military veteran, he can be found writing songs and playing guitar in Los Angeles and SCUBA diving around the world.
