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Spirit Of Adventure: Louis Vuitton Introduces Four New Time-Only Escale Watches

The latest Escale watches from Louis Vuitton make a subtle but strong connection to LV’s larger history.

Jack Forster7 Min ReadJune 11 2024

The latest Escale watches bring something new to the Escale family: simplicity. However, simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean simplistic. Since the launch of Escale in 2014, with the Escale World Timer, the Escale case design, with its style cues taken from Louis Vuitton trunks, has been a vehicle for complications, including a world timer, minute repeater, and several models which are platforms for Louis Vuitton’s “Spin Time,” time display system, with the hours shown on rotating cubes. And of course, earlier this year, Louis Vuitton launched the Escale Cabinet Of Wonders Metiers d’Art pieces – three watches inspired by the collections of Gaston-Louis Vuitton.

The newest watches in the collection, however, are three handed, time-only watches which, as it turns out, let the the connections to Louis Vuitton’s history and the details of its famous trunks really shine.

“Escale” is a French word with several closely related meanings; at its simplest, it means “stopover” but it can also mean “a port of call” – a port where a ship stops along its route. The name for the watch collection refers to the various elements of their designs which recall Louis Vuitton’s trunks, on which the fortune of the company was made and on whose reputation it still relies – perhaps not as a critical commercial element, but certainly essential to Louis Vuitton’s identity; the luggage equivalent of an haute couture collection. Ironically enough, with the exception of the Escale World Time watches the timepieces in the Escale family did not necessarily seem suited to the rigors of travel – although whether or not they are, undoubtedly depends on how you travel.

If you routinely travel with Louis Vuitton luggage, and especially the trunks, you may have different views on what constitutes the “rigors of travel”. The great French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was famous for her dramatic death scenes and who played everything from “The Lady of the Camellias” (from the novel by Alexandre Dumas) to “Hamlet,” once left for a tour of South America with two hundred, count ’em, two hundred Louis Vuitton trunks; the Escale World Time Minute Repeater appeared a century and one year after Bernhardt went on her tour. Undoubtedly she would have thought nothing of bringing a repeater along with her.

The new Escale watches are not travel watches per se – they’re not GMT or world time complications. They are, however, models of clarity in design, that show you can have a lot of carefully nuanced detail in a watch without obscuring its basic purpose, and as such, they lend themselves very much to a mobile life – like Louis Vuitton’s trunks, they are intended to be elegant ornaments to active exploration of the world, whose details are a celebration of exploration rather than an encumbrance.

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At launch, there are four models – two in rose gold and two in platinum. The rose gold watches come with two dial options – silver, and blue – and the two platinum models come with either a meteorite dial, or in a gem-set model with a case set in baguette diamonds. The non-gem set models all have the same case size – 39mm x 8.97mm (10.34mm to the top of the domed sapphire crystal) and the baguette diamond-set model is slightly larger, at 40.5mm x 9:30mm (again, with the domed crystal, slightly thicker at 12.74mm).

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As with the more complex Escale watches, the case and dial elements are drawn from both the manufacturing processes and actual physical details of Louis Vuitton’s luggage.

Zoom InThe Escale in rose gold, with silver textured dial

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The lugs are probably the most notable example – they’re patterned after the brass corner guards and brackets found on Louis Vuitton trunks. The texture of the dials on the rose gold models is intended to reflect the texture of Louis Vuitton’s Nomade leather, which is specifically intended for high durability and excellent wear characteristics. The applied dial markers also reflect the shapes of LV’s luggage hardware, as well as the nails and rivets used, and the hands are meant to evoke the needles used for stitching leather goods.

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These details are both very specific – if you are familiar with Louis Vuitton’s luggage, and the company’s history as a manufacturer of some of the most practical as well as luxurious luggage on the planet, you would probably notice the parallels without being prompted (or for that matter, even if the company’s name were absent from the dial).

Zoom InThe Escale in platinum, with meteorite dial.

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The movement is the micro-rotor caliber LF023, which is produced by La Fabrique du Temp’s partner, Le Cercle des Horlogers.

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This movement was first introduced by LV in the new Tambour models launched in 2023. The movement has a 50 hour power reserve, with a 22k gold micro-rotor, and as with the Tambour watches, in the new Escale models it’s a COSC certified chronometer as well.

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The whole notion of a watch built around design cues from travel essentials like trunks and other luggage, which is not specifically a multi-time zone or dual time-zone watch, seems a little contradictory at first but I think here it is useful to consider the world in which Louis Vuitton’s trunks, which are after all the design inspiration for these watches, were born. Dual time zone or multi-time zone watches were born out of necessity, and in the case of dual time zone or GMT watches, travel during the jet age. It may have once been true that air travel was at least making a sincere attempt to mimic the luxurious environment if not the more leisurely pace of travel in the pre-aviation era, when railroads and steamships were how you got around, but is certainly true that today, even the most expensive air travel accomodations have at least a little bit of an air of expediency and efficiency and not always in a good way.

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Insofar as they are related to travel, the new Escale watches seem to me to reflect a certain kind of travel – one in which the speed of travel is measured in tens rather than hundreds of kilometers per hour, and in which you have time to feel how the gradual changes in the landscape around you create gradual changes in your own internal landscape. Part of the appeal of Louis Vuitton’s trunks is their air of having come from a time when to travel abroad meant to take a journey outside yourself – something which can still be done, but which the breakneck speed of air travel has caused to contract; you no longer journey so much as simply arrive, as if you have switched television channels, and it’s from that world that GMT watches were born.

Traveling by train and steamship with two hundred trunks sounds less like a trip abroad and more like an expedition, but I think there is something to be said for a more contemplative pace of travel (if not for two hundred pieces of luggage) and like the trunks from which they derive their design cues, I think the Escale watches are a subtle but definite reminder that we miss something in seeing only the destination and not the journey.

The Louis Vuitton Escale Watches: Four models, two in rose gold and two in platinum; rose gold models with silver or blue textured dials; platinum models with meteorite dials or set with baguette diamonds, with onyx dial. All watches 39mm x 8.97mm without crystal; 10.34mm with crystal; baguette model, 40.5mm x 9.30mm (12.74mm with crystal) and set with 161 baguette cut diamonds. All models 50M water resistant. Movement for all models, caliber LF023, self-winding with 22k gold micro-rotor, winding in both directions, with 50 hour power reserve, running at 28,800 vph in 32 jewels; chronometer certified by the COSC. Prices: Rose gold models, $27,500; platinum with meteorite dial, $37,000. For more info, visit LouisVuitton.com