LVMH Watch Week: The Louis Vuitton Escale Minute Repeater, With Jumping Hours

The minute repeater is perhaps the last bastion of the world of complications as it was before CAD and CNC. The three classic high complications are the rattrapante chronograph, the perpetual calendar, and the repeater (and by extension the grande et petite sonnerie) and of the three, two – the perpetual calendar, and the rattrapante chronograph – have been successfully industrialized. Because it is part machine and part musical instrument, repeaters, for all that their development today takes full advantage of modern prototyping and manufacturing, still require a human touch in the adjustment of the chiming mechanism, to excel. For that reason, repeaters have an inherent romance, which is partly thanks to the skill required to make one, and partly thanks to the sheer fancifulness of the complication.

There are many different ways to approach engineering a repeater movement, and designing a watch around that movement, but at least so far when it comes to chiming complications, the team at La Fabrique du Temps have preferred to celebrate the fundamentals. This was the case in the Gérald Genta minute repeater, which introduced a new repeater movement, caliber GG-o2, in a case which celebrated elegant classicism as much as the movement celebrated old-school handwork. For LVMH Watch Week, Louis Vuitton has decided to combine the jump hour and minute repeater complications in the Escale Minute Repeater.

The minute repeater and jump hour combination has always felt like a romantic’s version of a romantic complication (at least, it has always felt that way to me). I’m not entirely sure why but the jump hour and retrograde seconds combination has echoes of the Art Deco era in watch design, when jump hour wristwatches and pocket watches were enjoying their first floruit, and I think it might be the combination of that air of idealism, and the air of refinement you find in repeaters.

The case is rose gold, 40mm x 12.5mm; for comparison the Genta minute repeater is 9.6mm; the additional 2.9mm is therefore taken up by any extra thickness in the dial (which is likely to be thicker than a simpler dial, thanks to the details of its construction) and follows the design playbook now well established in the Escale collection. There is however, an interesting surprise in the case. Normally, repeaters are activated by pushing a pusher set into the case flank, or pushing a slide, also set into the case flank. The slide of the two is the most common, and it has a distinctive shape which is a giveaway that, if it’s there on the watch you’re looking at, that you’re looking at a repeater. There is apparently no slide in the case; however, the slide’s there – it is camouflaged as one of the brackets connecting the case to the lugs, which are modeled on the corner brackets on Louis Vuitton trunks.

A couple of interesting technical points include the repeater slide construction, the case construction, and the dial and jump hour mechanism.

The movement in the Escale Minute Repeater is designated LFT SO13.01 – this appears to be the repeater caliber GG-02 used in the Gérald Genta minute repeater, but with the addition of the jump hour and retrograde minutes complication, and with the slide mechanism redesigned to make it possible to use one of the case brackets. The movement is positioned in the case of the Escale Minute Repeater in the same way as it is in the Genta Minute Repeater, with the crown opposite (more or less) the centrifugal governor. Thanks to the design updates, the LFT SO13.01 is different in some significant ways, from the GG-02 – in particular, the repeating works have to be set up so that they are perfectly coordinated with the jumping hours and retrograde minutes complications – the ideal is of course that the repeater will chime 11:59 at 11:59 and 59 seconds, and chime 12:00 one second after, at 12:00 and zero seconds. This naturally produces additional challenges for the watchmaker in setting up the watch.

The case construction seems to use some of the same basic concepts that were used in designing the Genta Repeater.

As seen from the front, the dial fills up almost, but not all, of the diameter of the case. The space outside the edge of the dial is covered by the bezel and as with the Genta Minute Repeater, the bezel is held in place by screws which run from the caseback, through the case middle, and into the bezel. This produces a single, rigid structure which acts as a single resonater for the gongs. The case middle is also relatively thin, to aid in sound transmission, and as you can see, there are apertures in the gold flange under the dial, to further aid in sound propagation to the dial and bezel. The same basic engineering concepts were used for the Genta Repeater as well.

The dial of the watch is what appears to be a quite thick disk of metal (the material is not specified by Louis Vuitton, although gold or brass would both work from a machining standpoint) and is quite three dimensional, with a raised sector for the retrograde minutes, and an almost amphitheater-like window for the hours. The guilloché pattern is what’s called flammé – flame, for obvious reasons – and the dial is a quite stately and suitably ornate stage setting for the jump hour and retrograde minute complications.

As is always the case with minute repeaters, hearing as well as seeing is believing, however Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini at La Fabrique du Temps have been working on repeaters for decades, including for Gérald Genta himself when he had launched his own brand. Their take on repeaters for Génta and now for Louis Vuitton is that classical construction and movement design have inherent virtues and interest beyond the question of modern technical innovation, and that combined with extremely clever case engineering, gave the Genta Repeater wonderful sound; I would expect nothing less from the Escale Minute Repeater.

The Louis Vuitton Escale Minute Repeater: case, 40mm x 12.3mm, rose gold, with sapphire crystals front and back; water resistance, 50M. Dial, hand guilloché; 18k rose gold minute hand and indexes. Movement, caliber LFT SO13.01, running at 21,600 vph in 48 jewels, 80 hour power reserve. Minute repeater with retrograde minutes and jumping hours. Price, $350,000.