Back in 2017, Louis Vuitton launched their Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon, a skeletonised masterpiece of Poincon de Geneve finishing and lavish house details. A couple of years later, they introduced the Tambour Spin Time Air, a strange amalgamation of spinning cubic indexes and sapphire crystal. Even early last year, they released a pair of flying tourbillons in green and yellow sapphire cases, again skeletonised, again completely off the horological deep end.
Louis Vuitton LV1 Worldtimer (1988)
So, in that context, why was Louis Vuitton’s most restrained timepiece to date their most important? I’m leading with these insane bits of watch, but that wasn’t Louis Vuitton’s first foray into watchmaking. That came back in the 1980s with the LV1. In keeping with the brand’s jetsetter reputation – can you be a proper jet-setter without some Louis Vuitton luggage? – they opted for a slick worldtimer. It’s a bit of a rarity these days and they don’t go for a huge amount, but compared to the later pieces, it was a class act.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Twenty based on the original Tambour which was released in 2002 (2022)
The Tambours of old on the other hand were what I’d consider novelties. Not in the ‘new this year’ sort of way, but in the way that meant they weren’t what you’d consider a collection of watches in the traditional sense. Sure, they all shared the drum-shaped case from which they took their name, but they were disparate, eclectic and never really had an identity.
They were branded of course, with plenty of LV paraphernalia across the board, but if anything, that shot the watches in the proverbial foot more than helped. It made Louis Vuitton seem like a fashion house throwing the kitchen sink on your wrist in the hopes it would stick and, if they wanted to be regarded in the same breath as Hermes and Chanel are these days, something needed to change.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Sketch
That change came with Jean Arnault. If you know the name, it’ll most likely be for two reasons: he’s the son of LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and brother of Frédéric Arnault, who until relatively recently was CEO of TAG Heuer. Needless to say, they’re a family that knows watches, and Jean himself is an avid aficionado of haute horology. And so it was his self- imposed mandate as director of watches at LVMH to make sure the LV in that formula could live up to the watchmaking task.
Of course, when it came to watchmaking as a craft, he had a lot to work with. Louis Vuitton acquired Fabrique du Temps way back in 2011 and over the last decade-and-change has turned it into a fully integrated development house. Pretty much anything a watchmaker should be able to do, they can do – and then some. So, all Arnault really needed to do was channel that talent into something approaching a serious collection – the 2023 Tambour.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Automatic 40mm Platinum, £18,100
Looking at the launch line-up of the revamped, 2023 Tambour, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Arnault is particularly taken by independent watchmaking. The less-is-more approach, the obsession with finishing, the classical nuances across the board make the new Tambour feel like a watch designed for collectors. Gone are the skeletonised dials and bright colours. Gone is the old LV logo splashed across everything. Instead, everything is clean, crisp and perfectly balanced in that drum-round case.
They are, of course, luxury sports watches, which even last year was a saturated market. But while it’s impossible to escape the spectre of Gerald Genta about these things, I’d argue that there was no other way to approach the Tambour. It’s not like the original design actually has lugs; an integrated bracelet is the only thing to do and by maintaining those more classical sensibilities instead of tired, flat planes and industrial finishing, it skirts the pitfall of Royal Oak and Nautilus association.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Automatic 40mm Caseback
All the same, it was a very safe collection. It’s priced high of course. It was never going to be cheap, with Louis Vuitton leveraging the downright stunning finishing of La Fabrique du Temps; seriously, look at that movement and tell me it’s not an absolute beauty. But after years of misfires, safety was what the brand needed. But something else was needed. After all, one good collection doesn’t make a watch brand.
Louis Vuitton Escale Platinum, £34,000
That next step came in the form of the Escale, which took a much more classical approach to a time-only watch. Gone was the drum-shaped Tambour case in favour of something much more traditional. Traditional as in, it actually had lugs. Those lugs are big and bolted to the side of the case, but they’re there and that means classical leather straps. It’s also a central seconds as opposed to the new Tambour’s small seconds, with bead minute markers that feel like they’d be at home on a Vacheron Constantin Patrimony. There are still some aesthetic swings, like the big hour markers at 12, three, six and nine o’clock, and the faceted, grippy crown, but otherwise it’s as straight-forward a dress watch as Louis Vuitton can make.
Between the Tambour and the Escale, Louis Vuitton’s offering a pair of handsome core collections and while I personally think the new Tambour nailed the aesthetic slightly more than the Escale, the latter is by no means a misfire. Far from it. The new colours are more than welcome and the meteorite edition is excellent. And if that were all Louis Vuitton were doing, it would warrant them being taken seriously. But it’s not.
Louis Vuitton Escale, £25,100
I mentioned previously Jean Arnault’s love of independent watchmaking. Well, that’s manifested in two ways outside of Louis Vuitton’s own watches, firstly in Daniel Roth. Roth is a name that makes serious collector’s fawn, a savant of independent watch design whose name has been passed from one watch group to another before landing at Louis Vuitton. Last year, they launched the first new Daniel Roth watch, using the brand’s signature case shape and three-scale timekeeping at six o’clock. It was incredibly faithful and the souscription limited edition pieces in yellow gold sold out fast.
It’s not hard to see why; the attention to detail was magnificent and Le Fabrique du Temps did an enviable job of imitating the master watchmaker to a tee. If you ever get a chance to see a Daniel Roth in the metal, do it – which has become a bit more likely this year with a non-limited (though still limited annual production) rose gold edition. It’s a grail watch in the truest sense and shows not only that the minds behind Louis Vuitton understand independent watchmaking, but that they have the horological chops to make it happen.
Daniel Roth Tourbilon Rose Gold
The Daniel Roth launch wasn’t quiet, but what was a lot more under the radar was Louis Vuitton’s Independent Watchmaking Prize. That’s right, alongside re-introducing a legendary name and completely revamping their own watch offering, Louis Vuitton has also been highlighting the good and great of indie watchmakers, the Mercury Music prize of horology.
It’s a bold move, to be honest. This isn’t like they’re trying to court these watchmakers; it’s acknowledging that they’re fantastic at what they do. Better than Louis Vuitton, in all honesty, and better than Daniel Roth in some cases. There’s no cynical marketing reason why one of the biggest luxury companies in the world would do something like this – except of course, for Arnault’s personal love of the craft.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Automatic 40mm Rose Gold, £51,500
That all brings me back to the Tambour and Escale. Sure, it’s hard to think of Louis Vuitton in the same thought as independent watchmaking. This isn’t F. P. Journe or Philippe Dufour. This is a luxury fashion company that loves trunks and travel. But the approach to both new collections has been that of an aficionado more than a brand, the kind of watches a collector of haute horology, not an LV monogram addict, would want from their watches. They could have just stamped said monogram on a third-party watch. That likely would have worked well enough in the vein of Armani watches. If you build it they will come. But ‘they’ aren’t Jean Arnault and while this may be one of the priciest passion projects in history, a project of passion it is.
More details at Louis Vuitton.
