Louis Vuitton is widely regarded as one of the most creative watch brands in existence; the winner of several GPHG awards and, since their acquisition of La Fabrique du Temps, home to two of the most inventive watchmakers in the business \u2013 Messrs Barbasini and Navas. But it wasn\u2019t always like this; their first attempt to enter the watchmaking world was a disaster, a disaster big enough to scare them away from producing watches for over a decade.<\/p>\n
In 1987, Louis Vuitton merged with Moet et Chandon and Hennessey to form the luxury conglomerate LVMH. All three partners emphasised their history and tradition, so it was a major surprise when one of the first products to emerge from the new group was a watch – actually two – but the surprise was doubled when it emerged that the new watches, from a firm that had never made a watch previously, were to be designed by someone who had not only never designed a watch before, but was also a woman. Gae Aulenti, who was both an architect and product designer, came to the attention of LV as her rapturously received conversion of the Gare d\u2019Orsay train station into a museum had just opened, and she was now working on another Paris landmark, the Pompidou Centre.<\/p>\n
Vuitton\u2019s history was inexorably bound up with travel, so the brief she was given was to produce the ultimate travel watch. But neither Gae nor LV had any history or tradition in the watch business, so she was handed a clean sheet of paper and a blank cheque along with the commission. The result was a watch which looked like no other; it had no lugs and the crown was at 12, and apart from this crown, the watch had no protrusions from its otherwise entirely smooth surface, the domed sapphire crystal flowing seamlessly into the 18ct case. The overall effect was like a pebble from the bed of a river after centuries of water had removed all the edges. But the case was as nothing compared to the dial, from the centre post of which were five hands – hours, minutes and seconds as normal but also a double-ended date hand and even an on-demand supplementary hour hand, enabling the time in two time zones to be read at a glance. As if this wasn\u2019t enough, above the centre post was a semi-circular cutaway for the giant moon-phase indicator, and outside this was an anti-clockwise rotating 24-hour disc which enabled the time anywhere in the world to be read against the movable outer disc listing twenty of the world\u2019s major cities.<\/p>\n
This remarkably complicated watch obviously couldn\u2019t be built by a firm with zero watch experience, so the manufacturing was turned over to IWC Schaffhausen, who developed a 24 jewel, high torque quartz movement specifically for Vuitton. The watch was launched at the end of 1988 at a price of 65,000 Francs \u2013 equivalent to \u00a35,900, when an 18ct Rolex Day-Date on an 18ct President bracelet cost \u00a36,600. The watch was much too radical for the world, let alone for LV\u2019s clientele, and it disappeared from the catalogues after three years. It would be over a decade before LV would return to watchmaking.<\/p>\n
But in the last few years, this disaster has turned into a triumph as the design of the LV1 has come to be recognised as the groundbreaker that it was; both the Ikepod and Ressence brands follow the pebble-like silhouette of the LV1 \u2013 although I don\u2019t know if either designer ever saw or handled an LV1. And the secondary market has embraced the LV1 and its sister model, the LV2, with open arms, as the LV1\u2019s time has finally come. It is the perfect watch for today: the right size at 40mm, unique styling unlike anything currently on the market, a prestigious name but not a watch which is easily identifiable on the wrist. It\u2019s the epitome of \u201cIf You Know, You Know\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"