From famous trunks to luxury leather goods and haute couture, the monogrammed house has tried its hand at every style exercise over the decades, including fine watchmaking. An exploration of time that began almost unofficially in 1988 with the LV 1 designed by Gae Aulenti, then officially in the early 2000s. More than twenty years after the launch of its first icon with the famous Tambour, Louis Vuitton is shaping the watchmaking world by daring avant-garde and audacious creations.
This, through La Fabrique du Temps, the manufacture of calibers specific to Louis Vuitton, opened in Geneva in 2011 and directed by the two goldsmiths Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini. After having recently launched the Tambour Jacquemart Répétition Minutes - a unique piece that celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Vuitton -, fluorescent Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève and astonishing automata, Louis Vuitton continues its journey through the time with the new Voyager Skeleton. A new demonstration of La Fabrique du Temps' unequaled know-how.
Created in the continuity and in the same vein as the Voyager Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève, the Voyager Skeleton innovates by stripping itself bare. Indeed, the latter, a true mechanical masterpiece, houses for the first time an entirely skeletonised automatic movement. Designed in-house by the craftsmen of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton and in collaboration with the Neuchâtel workshop Le Cercle des Horlogers, the structure of the LV60 caliber evokes in particular the geometric shapes of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
This openworked mechanism, autonomous up to 48 hours of power reserve, thus allows a clear view of all the components including the sandblasted LV-shaped bridges, decorated with fine linear graining on their surfaces and chamfered on their edges . Also revealed is a tungsten micro-rotor - a heavy metal - adorned with a rhodium-plated white gold plate as well as the barrel, both skeletonized. The whole is completed with a blue timer and a pair of hands of the same color for an optimal reading of the time which ticks away.
Finally, on the packaging side, Louis Vuitton has opted for the elegant minimalism of the Voyager case. With an atypical shape, halfway between a circle and a square, this box, now easily recognizable with its distinctive volume effects, was unveiled for the first time in 2016. This container with a 41 mm monocoque design is adorned here with platinum 95% pure, one of the most precious metals and acclaimed by collectors.
