AWG Visit to Louis Vuitton La Fabrique du Temps in Geneva -

As Watches & Wonders came to an end , we had the opportunity to continue our trip in Geneva with a special brand that has been creating great buzz lately; I am talking about Louis Vuitton of course and their own manufacture in Geneva: La Fabrique Du Temps.

I have been following closely the evolution of the brand over the past few years and their quest to become a legitimate watch brand playing with the big boys league. Of course, it is not simple to cast away the powerful name Louis Vuitton has in the fashion industry and set a new identity in the watch world; however, with the right vision of Jean Arnault , the Marketing and Development Director, Louis Vuitton Watches, with the strong presence of Michel Navas and Enrico Barabasini by his side; they are on the right track.

I had the pleasure to be visit the manufacture of La Fabrique du Temps with the guidance of Michel Navas and touring around the different workshops working on building the beautiful creations we have been witnessing lately.

Bare in mind, this manufacture is now the house for 3 brands with 2 icons coming back in 2023: Daniel Roth and Genta Design.

While discussing the revival of these 2 iconic brands, I was informed that a small dream team will be carved out from the current watchmakers to focus solely on the development of those 2 brands under the leadership of Michel and Enrico!!! I told you!! lot of exciting moments under one roof!

Now back to the Tour; we started our first stop with the designers who are the brains behind the exquisite movements and complications we get to experience every year and we took a close look first at the GPHG award winning Tambour Carpe Diem; and the many challenges the design team had faced to make it possible to achieve such an automata function.

This year, Louis Vuitton released the Tambour Fiery Heart Automata with a smaller size and a much more challenging design to keep all Automata functions operational in a smaller case.

What I really admired in the process of creating such projects is the level of integration and communication between several teams in-house to bring the project to Life. In order to be able to have these pieces produced, the designers need to be aligned with the case makers and the dial designers all at once, to react to any production limitations to achieve the final vision of the brand.

Our next stop was at the case designers – this is a task also completed all in house where there are about 7 steps that the team follows in order to get the right tambour shape, engravings and final specifications produced. We even had the chance to see a block of Sapphire that ways at least 45Kg used to cut the cases that make the Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon Sapphire (Green or Yellow or White)

Moving from the case manufacturing into the dial making workshop – this is one of the most important areas at the manufacture!! Louis Vuitton team pays a lot of attention into creating their own dials, experimenting with materials, finishing , colors and all kinds of ideas that sets the manufacture apart from any other Swiss rival.

Most of you might know that making dials usually is outsourced by the majority of watch manufactures; it is not an expertise that is kept in house – but for LV, this is a major steps in the watch making that they would like to keep inhouse under the Fabrique du Temps roof – except of course of Anita Porchet is working on a special piece for them 🙂

The following workshop was one of my favourites – painting and enameling and engraving… basically the artsy people!!!

Luckily they were working on one of my favourite pieces: the WorldTime with hand painting all over the dial; so I got the chance to showcase my painting skills which turned out to be not so bad after all. However, watching each one of the 3 artists working with such small tools and precision makes you appreciate the amount of hours actually spent on each dial to be able to get to the right colouring and finishing required.

I understand when a lot of people are skeptical about the high prices of enamel dials and hand painted pieces; but the only way to really appreciate the difficulty in creating those pieces is to watch them work on them in front of you.

Our final stop in the manufacture was with the watchmaking department and the assembly of the movements, testing and full watch final assembly. The watches assembled were tourbillons, minute repeaters, travel time pieces.. lot of complications and thus lot of expertise in-house. Many of the watchmakers in the department have great experience to be able to assemble a minute Repeater Tourbillon for instance.

What really caught my attention and this is something many of us are probably not aware of , but the level of integration and self sufficiency the manufacture has is admirable. When someone tells you Louis Vuitton is making watches, the first thing you would think is: Yes they have just put their name on an outsourced watch and their involvement was perhaps only on the design phase and the brand DNA… the reality is the complete opposite!!

While I am touring the manufacture and each of the separate departments and workshops; the same thought kept pinging on my mind – this is a very serious manufacture with a long term vision and plan that is here to stay! It’s not just a small subsidiary of a mega Luxury House that is a small fun project the owners are undertaking to feed some passion for Horology.

Finally, you cannot visit the Fabrique du Temps, without having a look at some rare goodies from both Genta and Daniel Roth.

With that I will leave you with some amazing pieces fetched from the archives and blew my mind away.