LVMH Watch Week: Louis Vuitton Launches The Tambour ‘Convergence,’ A New Flagship Collection
At the same time, Louis Vuitton has also quietly announced the launch of two new casemaking and fine handcrafts ateliers as well.
Louis Vuitton has been on something of a roll in watchmaking over the last few years and it looks like this year isn’t going to be any different. I didn’t have any specific expectations from LV Watches but based on the Tambour launch in 2023, and the consolidation and concentration of its catalog, along with the launch of hypercomplications like the 2021 Carpe Diem and exotic Métiers d’Art pieces, like the Escale “Cabinet Of Wonders” trilogy, I certainly hoped for not only more complications but also more classically oriented, time-only pieces that took advantage of the creative freedom LV’s resources afford its design and watchmaking teams – as well as something that took advantage of Louis Vuittons unquestionable mastery of design language, not only in watchmaking but in everything else as well. I got what I hoped for, and then some – I found the new Tambour Convergence watches so irresistible at first glance, that I’m almost embarrassed to say so.
The two new Tambour Convergence watches come in rose gold, or in platinum, with a snow-set diamond dial; there are a total of 795 individually cut, polished, and set round brilliant diamonds set into the dial of the platinum model. “Dial” is a little bit of a misnomer here as there is no conventional dial; instead, the time is show via two “dragging” (that is, constantly rotating as opposed to jumping) disks, one for the hours and one for the minutes.
The watches are both the same dimensions – 37mm x 8mm, and I think we can all agree that for this design, those dimensions put us in the Goldilocks zone; that is to say, “just right” in case you don’t remember the children’s story. The hours and minutes are shown in two separate guichets, or windows, and while in this genre of watch design, you often see some somewhat severe rectilinear Deco design language, here the design is more Art Nouveau in inspiration. Louis Vuitton says, to connect the dots a little to its own history, that the design derives partly from the graceful visual arabesques found in the Art Nouveau-style addition built on the Louis Vuitton family home in Asnières-sur-Seine, which was designed by Louis Vuitton’s son Georges.
Despite the unusual design the new Tambour Convergence watches are in a sense, rather old-fashioned; the dragging displays and apertures are part of the vocabulary of classic watch design and other examples include timepieces like the Tank à Guichets, although those watches are already more informed by Art Deco than Art Nouveau. The apertures are covered by two sapphire inserts, which are slightly curved for greater strength, but not so much as to visibly distort the numerals.
The two disks for the minutes and the hours are driven by a new movement, the LV caliber LFT MA01.01, which is an in-house automatic caliber – the general architecture of the movement appears to be a new one for LV and what we’ve seen of the bridgework from press images certainly looks new, with a circular bridge configuration. The rotor is in 18k pink gold, with micro-sandblasting finish on the bridges, and the movement runs at 28,800 vph, with a 46 hour power reserve, and was designed and manufactured at La Fabrique du Temps in Geneva.
The case is a classic Tambour case in that it’s widest at the bottom (like a drum; “tambour” means “drum”) and narrower at the top, although that tapering is less pronounced in the Tambour family of watches announced in 2023 – still, however, it’s different enough from the conventions of other watch designs to be both immediately visible, and immediately visibly different from other watches; I wonder to what extent the basic idea is protected by IP/patent filings as I don’t recall seeing that specific case shape in other watches. The rose gold model is of the two, more an every day watch although I suppose that depends on what your day looks like; the platinum model with snow-set diamonds is lavishly beautiful, but the snow setting, which produces as the term implies, the effect of a single surface, does not despite the use of nearly 800 diamonds, lose any of the purity of line of the design.
The use of a dragging display for the hours and minutes rather than a jumping display is an aesthetic decision, not a technical one; jumping hours and minutes have well known and decades old technical solutions. The constantly rotating disks are I think, intended to give a sense of the constant forward flow of time, in a way more serene than the abrupt changes of jumping indications and the single diamond-shaped indicator produces both the visual and the temporal convergence for which the watch is named.
Louis Vuitton has also mentioned in the press release that in addition to La Fabrique du Temps, its Geneva-based movement design and manufacturing facility, it now also has La Fabrique des Boîtiers (for casemaking) and La Fabrique des Arts (for fine handcrafts) both of which are also based in Geneva.
While there’s nothing groundbreaking about the Tambour Convergence watches technically, they are however both exceptional from a design standpoint, and in terms of general quality of construction. The thought, care, and love of watchmaking and watch design that went into them is immediately obvious, and they’re as elegant a take on the considerable challenge of designing a really beautiful and original time-only watch, as I’ve seen in a long time.
The Louis Vuitton Tambour Convergence watches, references W9PG11 (pink gold) and W9PT11 (platinum): cases, pink gold or platinum 37mm x 8mm, with sapphire windows for the dragging hours and minutes and sapphire display backs; water resistance 30 meters. Hour and minute disks, hand satin-brushed brass, with 4N pink gold or rhodium galvanic plating, and blue transfer-printed numerals. Movement, caliber LFTMA01.01, with 18K pink gold winding rotor, running at 28,800 vph in 26 jewels. Ref. W9PT11, 795 snow set diamonds and one saffron colored sapphire set into the caseback; total carat weight, 1.75 carats. See more at LouisVuitton.com.