Ask yourself the following question: How many truly fantastic three-hand watches are there in existence? I mean, truly epic timepieces that seem to have been not so much designed, but willed into existence through the force of the collective collectors’ consciousness? The Philippe Dufour Simplicity, Rexhep Rexhepi’s Chronomètre Contemporain I and II, the Chopard L.U.C 1860 especially now that it comes without a date, and Kari Voutilainen’s Vingt-8? The point is that there are not many of them and I am putting my hand on a stack of Bibles and going irreversibly on the record to state that the new Louis Vuitton Escale is one of them. Am I aware that this is a bold statement? Yes. I am. However, as a journalist, I’ve always tried to make my reputation by sticking my neck out and supporting something truly great that you might not be aware of — which goes back to my initial support of Louis Vuitton as a high watchmaking brand this time last year.

Much of my enthusiasm for Louis Vuitton watches and Louis Vuitton as a true high watchmaking brand has to do with the man behind the maison, that is, a young but brilliant young man who is to me a once-in-a-generation leader with the potential to equal the achievements of the greats like Günter Blümlein. That’s because Jean Arnault is in possession of three major attributes that distinguish him amongst his peers. The first is genuine passion. I’ve known Arnault since he was a teenager and I’ve met very few individuals with the same total irrefutable and genuine love for watches that he has. The second is what I call “horological intellect” — he possesses not just a categorical knowledge of everything from the most obscure independent watchmakers to the minutia of vintage Patek Philippe, but also a singular elegance in his taste. The third, which is perhaps the most impressive of all, is the capacity to execute his vision to transform Louis Vuitton in just three years into one of the most wonderfully watch-centric brands in the world.

 

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This was made abundantly clear to me on the evening of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives. The interior of Fondation Louis Vuitton was so filled to the brim with the who’s who of independent watchmaking, the world’s most famous collectors and the totality of our press corps, Nick Foulkes and I joked that if a bomb went off there, there would be no more watch industry. More importantly, everyone there, from Carine Maillard of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) and Ben Clymer of Hodinkee to Kari Voutilainen and Denis Flageollet, had turned up to show their love for Arnault and his championing of the next generation of independent watchmakers. Raúl Pagès won the inaugural prize that evening and wept onstage when he received it, but it was Arnault who had set the stage for his recognition.

Jean Arnault: A man of passion and excellence

All of this is to make the point that the watch I’m going to talk to you about is created by a guy who genuinely loves watches, but even more, loves the industry he has now become an integral part of (And therefore made it to our Revolutionary of the Year for Revo Awards 2023. Read about it here). OK, I see you strumming your fingers asking if I’m ready to start talking about the Escale watch that you came here to read about. I’m going to ask you to bear with me. Because I want to explain that all of Arnault’s goodwill to the watch industry would ultimately be meaningless, all the collaborations with independent watchmaking legends like Rexhep Rexhepi, the restoration of the clock at Notre Dame, the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize, the revival of Daniel Roth and gérald genta would be meaningless, if his own watches, meaning the Louis Vuitton watches, were not damnably good. Which means that shortly after joining the brand as director at the tender age of 25, Jean Arnault made the decision to discontinue all quartz Louis Vuitton men watches as well as the brand’s most popular reference, the Tambour.

He explains, “First, there was a big disconnect between the level of our other product categories and of our core business watch offer. Second, I wanted our watches to be the objects of desire to even the most accomplished collectors. They had to genuinely want the watches. I knew in order to do that, we had to start from scratch getting rid of all the old models and starting again with two watches. First, our new Tambour integrated bracelet dress watch. Then the year after with the Escale, our three-hand dress watch in a round case.”

Was this a big roll of the dice? Of course it was. Did the move take cojones the size of Mt. Olympus to set it in motion? You bet. Because such is Louis Vuitton’s leadership position in the luxury world that if the watches were in any way subpar, horologically naïve, uncomfortable on the wrist, and perhaps most of all derivative in any way, it would have been a disaster. The number of self-anointed critics sitting in their underpants in their mothers’ basements with their knives out ready to savage these watches in the comments section would have numbered greater than the Persian army commanded by Cyrus the Great.

Then Arnault launched the Tambour at Musée d’Orsay and the collective opinion was that it was good. Very good. So much so that even the odd hater who tried to attack the new watch saw their feeble lamentations dissipate quickly like the winds over Vesuvius. Because the watches, as I said, are really good.

As an aside, there is a new brand of social media journalism these days where people make their reputation by hating on things. This has gained popular appeal for the same reason tabloid journalism such as TMZ has a massive audience, because it appeals to the lowest common denominator. As an old guy, I was raised by my mother to follow the adage, “If you have nothing good say, say nothing at all.” Meaning if I don’t like something, you simply won’t hear me say much about it. But, on the other hand, if I love something or someone the way I love my fiancée and my dog, and the way I love the new Tambour, I’m going to be unabashed about it.

When asked if he was intimidated by the massive chance he took discontinuing the past and creating a new era for Louis Vuitton watches, Arnault says, “It was clear that while we had some impressive high complications, when it came to the commercial offer, there was a disconnect. To some degree, the fact that watches are not our largest category gave us a certain creative freedom when it came to the redesign of the Tambour and Escale.

My father always says, ‘Start with the product first and everything else will follow.’ I used this philosophy in the approach to recreating our watches.”

Elevating the Escale

OK, so now it’s time to talk about the Escale. I’ve said before that it is great. How do I qualify this? Let me quote my hero, the great gentleman gourmand Hannibal Lector, “We begin by coveting what we see every day.” (Yes, I do sometimes imagine ingesting the livers of the more irritating elements in this world with some favas beans and a nice Chianti.) And the immediate visual impression created by the Escale is that it is irrefutably appealing in the way that Catherine Deneuve was in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, undeniably gorgeous, with that wonderful sense of an ingénue taking her first small step toward superstardom. So, too, with these watches which have defined an all-new watchmaking design language that is completely original, highly intoxicating, and that cleverly riffs on Louis Vuitton’s roots as a trunk maker while replete with enough hardcore watch nerd nuances that they had me grinning ear to ear about the Escale.

If you’ve read articles about the Tambour, you are going to hear a lot about how it was inspired by Louis Vuitton’s trunk making and takes many of its design codes, such as its lugs and indexes, from elements of these trunks. Which all works. But the reason why I love the Escale is that it is clearly created by someone with an immense love for the golden age of the gentlemen’s chronometer from the ’40s and ’50s.

On the subject of developing a contemporary identity for Louis Vuitton timepieces, Arnault reveals, “What was important with our watches is that they felt entirely original and very Louis Vuitton. So our design language had to be inspired by our roots as a malletier or trunk maker. For example, the lugs of the Escale have always been screwed to the case from the inside in a way the echoes the lozenges at the corner of our trunks. But this now allows us to create even more complex and stylized lugs. This is our way of paying tribute both to our heritage [and] the stylized soldered lugged cases made by companies such as Wenger, Taubert, Borgel and Gerlach.

“The old Escale also featured this construction. But the redesign gave us an opportunity to rework the lugs, to exaggerate the flare. But what is new is that we have applied multiple facets to these, brushing from 12 to six and then mirror polishing them at a sharp 45-degree angle for both the outer and inner flank, which can only be done by hand and by using the same type of wood that [the greatest watchmakers] are known to use for their anglage.”

An LV signature that’s timeless yet original

Looking at the dial of the watch, it resonates with a perfect golden ratio-like sense of balance. Arnault explains, “We wanted the position of the sub-seconds indicator in Tambour and Escale to be perfectly symmetrical and fall equidistant from the cannon pinion and the rehaut, so we had to design the dial first and then create a movement to fit this requirement, rather than use an off-the-shelf movement. We worked on multiple finishes for the center part of the Escale dial. We wanted an effect like a frosted surface but found a way to create a pattern that subtly echoed the texture of the signature canvas on our trunks. Similarly, the markers at 12, three, six and nine are inspired by the lozenge found on the lower lip of the trunk but then hand polished on every facet so they bring luminosity and dimension. We also added high polished applied dot markers, which might look like the type of markers found in old Pateks and Vacherons but actually are inspired by the nail heads used in our trunks. For the hands, we tried 50 to 60 different styles before we arrived at these, which feel really timeless but also quite original.”

There are, however, some details that speak of the unabashed watch nerd in Arnault. He laughs and says, “We used ‘Fab. En Suisse’ because this was used in old Pateks delivered to the French market; it’s a bit of a clin d’œil to vintage watch culture.” When asked what his favorite detail about the new Escale is, Arnault replies, “We wanted to ensure that the power reserve of the LFT023 micro- rotor caliber is the same as that in the Tambour. In order to achieve that, we had to transform the seconds hand to titanium to make it lighter as it’s a center seconds and much longer than that in the Tambour. It’s a nerdy detail but it speaks to the integrity of keeping the power reserve the same across both models.”

The end result are watches that resonate with a visual richness. It is clear that every small design decision has been deliberated on and considered in detail. What is undeniable is the lavish sense of finishing applied to every aspect of the timepieces. Arnault says, “Look, with a brand like Lange, there is no difference in finish for a three-hand watch or to the Tourbograph. We realized that we had to bring the highest level of finish to even our most accessible watches. At the same time it was important to be original. So even the finishing of the movement which we created with Le Cercle des Horlogers is unique to us.”

The size of the new Escale is an ideal 39mm in diameter and 10mm in thickness. Says Arnault, “We could have made it thinner as with the 8mm-thick Tambour, but we wanted to keep the domed sapphire and the dimensionality of the dial.”

A canvas for unique métiers

In truth, you’ve already seen a sneak peek of the Escale case. This was the home for the stunning Métiers d’Art watches that were a tribute to Gaston-Louis Vuitton’s collection of samurai sword hilts named tsubas. The three métiers d’art watches, collectively known as the Louis Vuitton Escale Cabinet of Wonders, are inspired by these Japanese tsubas, the highly decorated hand guards of samurai long swords or katanas. The first amongst these watches features a pair of Japanese koi fish nestled in a yin and yang position. The fish and background are entirely hand engraved before lacquer is applied to them. They are complemented by translucent mother-of-pearl, rock crystal, smoky quartz and diamond pebbles featuring the LV motif and flower. This watch, which will be made in 20 examples, also features a new “Gaston-Louis Vuitton” or GLV signature on the dial in a very cool stylized Deco motif.

However, what is interesting is that because of the subtly modulated tone-on-tone chromatic execution, the watch feels highly contemporary. As I point out to Arnault, “It does a great job of connecting métiers d’art to the modern customer.” To which he replies with a smile, “That’s exactly the point.” The koi-themed watch is joined by a fantastic serpent-themed watch. The snake appears about to strike at the GLV logo, as it hovers over it. The background for this motif is crafted out of wood, straw and parchment marquetry in 14 shades of green, while the snake is a masterwork of three-dimensional champlevé enameling. Rounding out the trinity is the dragon-themed watch, which somehow avoids feeling cliched thanks to the genuinely cool black and gold scales rendered in Louis Vuitton’s blossom motif, which add just the right soupçon of street style, “Pharrell-like” swagger to the design.

What is brilliant about this use of the prelaunch of the Escale is it immediately shows the potential of this case as the home for the stunning artisanal craftsmanship that Arnault has brought in-house. To my knowledge, he has pretty much every form of enamel from cloisonné to champleve to plique-à-jour on premises. He also has three vintage guilloché main machines and a former AP craftsman overseeing their implementation. One of these machines is capable of three-dimensional guilloché main that you’ve seen on domed clocks in the past,” explains Arnault.”

The new Escale launch consist of four models: two rose gold models one with a silver dial and another with a blue dial; and two platinum models, one with a meteorite dial and one with an onyx dial with a bezel set with baguette diamonds. Overall, the Escale continues with what the Tambour achieved last year, arriving as a new pillar of strength for Louis Vuitton. However, as a case not just for stunning dials, but also the incredible high complication talents of Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini, the potential is extremely exciting. Importantly, it is an assured and successful second step in Louis Vuitton’s roadmap to the future, thanks to the leader behind the brand.