n July 2023 at the presentation of the latest Tambour, the brand’s flagship model which has undergone a complete makeover, the young Jean Arnault – head of the Watches division of Louis Vuitton since 2022 – announced a major change in the brand’s watch strategy.

The change of direction is radical: eighty percent of the existing product line-up has been discontinued, priority being given to high-end watches and the integration of manual trades and handcrafts at La Fabrique du Temps in Geneva, led by master watchmakers Enrico Barbasini and Michel Navas. (Read Louis Vuitton reveals a new strategy for watches, July 2023.) This dramatic strategic shift is embodied not only in the new Tambour, but also in the exceptional new models unveiled to the press in Megève in early March 2024.

Included in this strategy of moving upmarket, achieving greater vertical integration and going for full, deep-seated watchmaking legitimacy are two initiatives that recently made headlines. Both directly address young – but also less young – independent watchmakers.

The first is the creation of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives; the second the release of the LVRR-01, a remarkable watch designed in a collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Akrivia, the independent brand owned by Rexhep Rexhepi.

Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives

The announcement of the launch of the prize – richly endowed, as the winner receives a €150,000 and a year’s mentoring at La Fabrique du Temps – attracted unprecedented interest: around a thousand applications from all over the world. Shortlisted after appraisal of their submissions by an initial jury of no fewer than 45 experts, all of them renowned, twenty semi-finalists were selected.

“Watchmaking today belongs to those who dare defy convention, modernise heritage by innovating and remain true to a singular vision. The semi-finalists represent a diverse group of watchmakers from all over the world, from the historical cradle of horology, Switzerland, to China, Finland, Australia, Japan, Canada and California. They represent everything that watch-lovers appreciate above all else: unique aesthetics, precision and uncompromising craftsmanship,” an enthusiastic Jean Arnault declared on this occasion.

“Unique aesthetics, precision, craftsmanship” – is that not a vision of exactly what Louis Vuitton watches should stand for, in his view?

Of the twenty semi-finalists, five were selected for the final, which was held with pomp and ceremony in Paris on 6 February 2024 in the futuristic edifice designed by star architect Frank Gehry to house the prestigious exhibitions of the ultra-rich Louis Vuitton Foundation.

The five finalists of the first edition of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives: Andreas Strehler – Tischkalender Sympathique, a mechanical perpetual table calendar with indication of year, month, date and day of the week, and a pocket watch as master timekeeper, indication of hours, minutes, seconds, day and night, mechanical memory status. John-Mikaël Flaux – L’abeille mécanique, a time object with poetic hours, carousel movement, manual winding with key, 40h power reserve. Raul Pagès – RP1 Régulateur à détente, a mechanical manual-winding watch, in-house calibre with a detent escapement with pivoted lever. Petermann Bédat – Chronographe Rattrapante, a chronograph, stopwatch, jumping minute and rattrapante mechanism. Simon Brette – Chronomètre Artisans, a mechanical manual-winding watch, in-house calibre, hours, minutes, small second & stop second.

When the envelope containing the name of the future winner was opened, the finalists’ emotions were palpable and the laureate, Raúl Pagès, was unable to hold back the tears. Because while all these outstanding artisans and watchmakers are already acknowledged by the experts, their individual career paths have been long, arduous, strewn with stumbling blocks and other difficulties. 

“I would have been over the moon to get that kind of encouragement when I was starting out,” Rexhep Rexhepi (Akrivia) murmured to me; he was a member of the smaller, final jury alongside four other celebrities from the watchmaking world: Michael Tay (The Hour Glass), Carole Forestier-Kasapi, (Movements director at TAG Heuer), Auro Montanari (a writer and collector of renown) and Jiaxian Su (journalist, SJX Watches). You can read a portrait of the winner, Raùl Pagés.

The LVRR-01 Chronographe à Sonnerie, a collaboration between Rexhep Rexhepi (Akrivia) and Louis Vuitton

The second aspect of this very unusual gesture on the part of Louis Vuitton towards independent watchmakers is the release of an exceptional watch made in collaboration with Akrivia. And it is only the start, because the brand intends to step up this kind of initiative in the future. The LVRR-01 (standing for Louis Vuitton Rexhep Rexhepi) is just the first collaboration to be unveiled in a series of watches that will be made in partnership with independent watchmakers “of renown” – a win-win strategy that simultaneously puts one independent watchmaker in the spotlight and demonstrates Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking fibre while sharing know-how; it also, inevitably, reminds one of the famous Opus series initiated by Max Büsser when he was CEO of the watchmaking arm of Harry Winston (a series that was abandoned, sadly, after the New York-based company was taken over by the Swatch Group).

The sonnerie chronograph is activated by a pusher at 8 o’clock on the rear of the watch and at 2 o’clock on the front.

Louis Vuitton is taking up the torch in its own way, and no one can deny that the first creation to emerge from such a collaboration is a resounding success.

Rexhep Rexhepi takes up the story: “I met Jean Arnault and he told me about the competition he wanted to organise to promote independent watchmakers. Then he suggested a one-to-one collaboration. The idea was to come up with a watch based on a Tambour case. It was a tight deadline….”

So the watchmaker proposed a double-faced watch, a first-of-its-kind Chronographe à Sonnerie. On the front dial, a five-minute tourbillon – much slower than the traditional one-minute tourbillon – hours and minutes display, cube-shaped markers in plique à jour enamel (the cubes reminiscent of some of Louis Vuitton’s best-known haute horlogerie models) and, under a transparent dial in smoked sapphire, an entirely visible, inverted chronograph movement activated by a pusher at 2 o’clock, with a hammer and its gong.

Stepped bezel, sculpted lugs evocative of 1950s watches, heptagonal crown and pusher reminiscent of Louis Vuitton watches. The platinum case of the LVRR-01 revisits the iconic shape of the Tambour.

On the back, the aesthetic is radically different, all tech-look minimalism inspired by the instrument watches of yore. Two time scales, a railway-type track in blue for the chronograph seconds and one in red for the minutes, both painted in enamel on a grand feu enamel dial on a palladium gold base.

But the very rare and crucial feature of this chronograph is that it chimes the elapsed minutes, something which, unless proof of the contrary emerges, has never been achieved in a wristwatch. “Chiming every minute demands considerable energy,” explains Rexhep Rexhepi. “That’s why we implemented a second barrel devoted specifically to the chime – which can strike up to 240 times. But the barrel has a dual purpose: via a feeler connected to the seconds train it also helps the chronograph, ‘pushing’ it at the start so there’s no loss of amplitude. This is a completely new movement that involved a huge amount of technical research. I also use it as a laboratory for developing new projects. I have full ownership of this development. It’s a winning collaboration, truly designed to support independent watchmakers. It gave me the opportunity not only to create something completely new, but also to explore. I’d been wanting to develop an in-house sonnerie for a long time. For this watch, we were able to produce the monobloc gong entirely in our own workshops.”

The limiting factor for the case was that they had to reproduce the shape of the Tambour. And, evidently, adapt it to this completely new movement and its dual-face display. While this project gave Rexhep Rexhepi the chance to do some in-depth technical research and develop new know-how, for the case he was able to count on the mastery of Jean-Pierre Hagmann, a master casemaker of vast experience with whom he opened Atelier Akrivia, where all his cases are now made.

Moreover, the discreet “JPH” hallmark of Jean-Pierre Hagmann is engraved on the watch’s lower right-hand lug. On the case back is engraved the inscription “Louis cruises with Rexhep”. And on the canvas of the trunk that serves as the presentation box, a hand-painted, interlaced monogram symbolises this fruitful collaboration on this limited edition of ten (plus two others, one for Louis Vuitton, one for Akrivia).

ARTS AND CRAFTS – DRIVERS OF GROWTH

In the vast, immaculate corridors of the Les Cabinotiers watchmaking complex in Meyrin, the only sound to be heard is the hum of brand-new CNC machines. They are machining brass parts for future watches bearing the Louis Vuitton name. The machines run 24 hours a day – a sustained pace, which underlines the ambition of the Paris-based trunk manufacturer to make Geneva the hub of its new watch strategy: concentrated but high-tech production thanks to the integration of all the watchmaking trades in a single, vertical manufacture, La Fabrique du Temps.

Voyager Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève Plique-à-Jour: Plique-à-jour is a technique inherited from the Byzantine Empire, which few European artisans master. It consists of depositing the enamel in cavities without a backing, like a miniature piece of stained glass. The stained-glass windows of the Louis Vuitton building in Asnières served as the inspiration for this watch. Three shades of blue were used for the colour grading: ultramarine, azure and blueish grey. The gears are assembled in-line, leaving the sides free and ensuring complete transparency, despite the watch’s 168 parts – an achievement the quality and complexity of which whose quality and complexity earned it the Geneva Seal.

During the course of 2023, the French brand acquired three Swiss suppliers (Microedge, H2L, R&D), specialists in watch cases, dials and movements. Now an integral part of La Fabrique du Temps, they are the latest departments dedicated exclusively to watch production for the LVMH group. Last summer, they moved into the two buildings of the fast-expanding manufacture, which employs a workforce of 200 and plans to double the size of certain departments soon. While dial and casing machining occupies several floors, the lion’s share of the space is devoted to arts and crafts.

Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève Sapphire Frank Gehry is the first watch created by Frank Gehry, the architect of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and Louis Vuitton Maison Seoul. To design the white structure carved out of a 200kg block of sapphire inside which a linear movement appears to float, the Canadian architect crumpled up a photo of a 2022 Tambour Moon Saphir. He then reproduced the folds on the dial of the new model. The LFTMM05.01 calibre, the model’s hand-wound skeleton flying tourbillon movement with 160 parts, was developed in-house, like all the others. The dial alone required 250 hours of work.

On the ground floor, La Fabrique des Arts – the latest space in the building to be created – unites the different craft skills thanks to which Louis Vuitton is putting into practice its new strategy of personalisation. Customers can visit the “gem bar”, which is overlooked by an imposing block of meteorite. Here, they can choose the materials to adorn their watch dial or the scene played out by their automaton: enamels from anywhere in the world, gemstones such as chalcedony, lepidolite, aventurine or hawk’s eye. The bar’s drawers contain more than 2,000 colour references in powder form – enough to ensure almost limitless creativity.

The Cabinet of Wonders trilogy embodies Vuitton’s new artistic direction. It features the demanding techniques of micro-sculpture, engraving and champlevé enamelling. The first model, a snake in a bamboo garden, represents wisdom; the second, a dragon in the clouds, asserts power; and the third, koi carp in a pond, symbolises perseverance. All three watches have the LFT023 calibre of Escale collection fame, with a 50-hour power reserve. The 40mm case in white or pink gold features the Japanese Seigaiha wave pattern, while the braided strap is reminiscent of katana handles.