LVMH Watch Week kicks-off today. The first novelties of 2025 from Hublot, TAG Heuer and Zenith drop this afternoon, but Louis Vuitton is up first with two new Tambour capsule collections that may well hog the limelight from its stablemates for their vintage-to-modern design and horological audacity.
The most complex are a series of six Tambour Spin Time watches — each a limited edition — that display the time with a central minute hand and 12 twelve cubes that act as hour markers.
At any one time, eleven of the cubes have the same look as the rest of the “dolphin-grey” dials but the cube for the current hour flips round to a paler grey face.
Think of it as a variation of jumping hour watches, but every cube on the dial jumps to show the passing hours.
La Fabrique du Temps, now owned by LVMH, created a movement for this complication back in 2007 and launched the first Spin Time watches two years later.
Watchmakers Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini developed the concept, which was inspired by Inspired by old fashioned cascading displays that show timetables in airports and railway stations.
La Fabrique du Temps was acquired by Louis Vuitton in 2011 with Mr Navas and Mr Barbasini still steering its watchmaking under the leadership of watch director Jean Arnault.
Mr Arnault says it was the Spin Time that alerted LVMH to the potential of LFT to take Louis Vuitton watchmaking to a new level.
“Without Spin Time, we would not have embarked on the challenge of entering high watchmaking in this manner,” Mr Arnault says. “And consequently, we would not have integrated La Fabrique du Temps, which is a founding moment for our watchmaking.”
Six variations of the Spin Time arrive today, all in the sophisticated cases of the Tambour family.
Five are time-only, with the hour marker cubes and central minutes hand in either 39.5mm or 42.5mm satin-brushed white gold cases.
Two have have closed dials and are distinguished by the use of pave diamonds on one of the references to decorate the bezel and lugs. Both are sold on rubber straps in the same dolphin grey as the dials.
The remaining three time-only watches are all skeletonized so that the central dial and hour cubes appear to float within their cases.
One of the skeletonized pieces comes with diamond decoration, the other without.
Top of the skeletonized time-only trio is a model with a central flying tourbillon.
A sixth skeletonized reference, a world timer, required a new movement to control the 12 cubes, which carry the abbreviations of 24 world cities in two colours: dark for night and light for daylight hours.
This required a new way to display the hours, so LFT put a map of the world on a central dial with a yellow arrow pointing to more traditional hour markers.
Pairs of cities on each cube are 12 time zones apart. For instance, Los Angeles and Dubai are 12 hours apart so they occupy the same cube, reflecting the fact that midnight in Los Angeles is midday in Dubai.
Louis Vuitton has been contacted for price information.