Now a true Louis Vuitton mascot, the mischievous Vivienne is setting off on extraordinary new adventures. In two new jumping hour timepieces, Sakura Vivienne discovers Japan’s blossoming cherry trees, while Astronaut Vivienne explores the outer reaches of space. For these two fantastical journeys, Louis Vuitton combines a unique jumping hour complication with a perfect mastery of the most sophisticated watchmaking techniques.
In 2017, when Louis Vuitton first came up with Vivienne, this dainty little character quickly carved out her own niche in the Maison’s creative universe. The brand’s poetic icon, with a silhouette inspired by the Monogram Flower, threw herself into the Maison’s jewellery, watchmaking, ready-to-wear, and leather goods collections, becoming her own mascot along the way.
Vivienne infused the Monogram canvas with her zany spirit, alternately transforming into a miniature jewel or playing hide-and-seek with the time against a backdrop of fascinating and precious timepieces.
After she revealed the time on a secret watch in 2020, twelve tiny versions of the mischievous mascot could be found on the Tambour Spin Time Air in 2021. The following year, Louis Vuitton cast its favourite character as a fortune teller, a croupier, and a juggler in three different Tambour Slim Jumping Hours.
Today, La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton is unveiling a new chapter in Vivienne’s adventures, sending her on two marvellous journeys with the Tambour Slim Vivienne Jumping Hours Sakura and the Tambour Slim Vivienne Jumping Hours Astronaut. For these watches, the Maison called on La Fabrique du Temps’ most talented craftspeople, who worked together to develop dials with an unrivalled degree of ingenuity.
Vivienne in the land of artistry
Louis Vuitton chose a pastel colour palette for the Sakura – “cherry blossom” in Japanese – model, thus imbuing the timepiece with all the elegance and fragility of these fleeting flowers. Its white gold case, featuring diamond-studded lugs, allows the iridescent Monogram flowers to flourish on the surface of its pink mother-of-pearl dial. To create this floral pattern, Louis Vuitton artisans used the “Holomonogram” technique, which consists of sand-polishing pearl to achieve high-contrast yet transparent motifs.
This subtle interplay of light is heightened by the shine of white diamonds delicately inlaid around Vivienne’s face, as well as by the miniature cherry blossoms and branches that were hand-painted by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton’s artisans.
Dressed in a kimono and holding a parasol and a fan, a spirited Vivienne displays the time by alternating between two apertures that can show either a blossom or the hour. The minutes are indicated by a transparent hand tipped with a cherry blossom that seems to float around the dial.
As for Astronaut Vivienne, Louis Vuitton created an exceptional dial that combines blue mother-of-pearl with an aventurine for the very first time inside our collection. This unprecedented blend creates a deep, glimmering Milky Way sky. In the midst of a diamond constellation of Monogram flowers and miniature paintings of a rocket and planets, Vivienne appears in the dial’s centre in an astronaut suit with red and black hand-painted details, her hair studded with snow-set diamonds.
As with Sakura Vivienne, Astronaut Vivienne is housed in a white gold case whose lugs are studded with diamonds. The Louis Vuitton mascot also displays the time in an alternating fashion – the time jumps from one aperture and planet to the next. As for the minute hand, it takes the shape of a comet orbiting the dial.
A mechanism that plays hide-and-seek
La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton developed a highly innovative mechanical jumping hour movement that was entirely created, developed, and assembled within the Maison’s workshop in Geneva. The brand’s watchmakers chose an unconventional way of telling the time, alternating between the two separate apertures placed in the dials of the Tambour Slim Vivienne Jumping Hours. An almost invisible minute hand only adds to the mystery of this unprecedented display.
The dial bears Louis Vuitton’s new signature, “Fab. en Suisse” – Made in Switzerland –, indicating where the watch was crafted: La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, Meyrin, Geneva.
To properly admire the beauty of this LV 180 movement, with its rose gold oscillating weight engraved with Monogram flowers, Louis Vuitton equipped its two watch models with a transparent sapphire crystal back.
Thanks to a bold design that echoes the playfulness of this calibre – specially designed for the Vivienne timepieces – the Tambour Slim Vivienne Jumping Hours Sakura and Astronaut embody La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton’s double expertise in the realms of artistic crafts and High Watchmaking.
