Louis Vuitton Monterey Reborn | In Conversation with Jean Arnault

So Jean, it's October 6th, 9 a.m. Sorry. Very good to see you. Exactly. Please tell me what you have in this case. I would first suggest that you take this off. No, not the gloves on. Just take the gloves off and see what it's like. Okay, wow. So, this watch you know. I do. Have you seen one in real life before? Actually, I haven't, no. So, this is the Monterey LV1, 1988. The first watch ever made by Louis Vuitton. And it was a collaboration between Louis Vuitton and IWC. Yes. Obviously, a secret collaboration in a way. Like, IWC just made the watch with Vuitton, but there was no official like co-branding or anything. 1988 years old. 1988. This is really cool to me because this is 10 years after LMH had acquired it. Yes. So, this is Gunther Blumlein. Exactly. This is very cool. Exactly. And so, Vuitton contracted Gheo Valenti, the famous Italian architect, that actually restored the Musée d'Orsay from... Sorry. Transformed the Musée d'Orsay from a train station to a museum. Wow. Under Valérie Giscard d'Estaing. And that became sort of her claim to fame, in France at least, and sparked the interest of the LV management back then to say, actually, she's never made a collection. She should make a collection for us. So, she made watches. She made pens and stuff like that. And arguably, this watch is probably one of the most interesting ones that came out of that collaboration. This watch has become quite a sensation. I remember seeing it online on eBay for around 2,500 euros and was hesitating with my team. Oh, should I buy it? Should I not buy it? What should I do? Et cetera. I ended up not buying that watch, and I was very disappointed. So, I bought a later LV one, but it was much, much more expensive. And yeah, it was just surprising to see the excitement coming from the watch. So, it only came naturally that we decided to relaunch that watch, in a way, but make it modern and make it 21st century. So, if you want to see, you can open this case and see the new Louis Vuitton Monterey. This time, not 1988, but 2025. Yeah, it's funny though. It seems like everything from the 1980s is now a flashpoint of inspiration for the current generation. Yes. Yet, I didn't want to make it exactly the same. So, obviously, we could have chosen to use the same quartz movement, the same re-edition and everything like that. But, La Fabrique Vuitton being La Fabrique Vuitton, I wanted to represent what Louis Vuitton was capable of doing today. What kind of dial is this? Enamel. Dude! Yeah. That is really cool. Entirely enamel. Enamel dial, in-house movement. Okay, so this is the second time he's done this as well, because I remember he showed me the first Agenta Jump Aramid Repeater. And I'm like, oh, that's really cool. Then I look at it, and it's like, holy ----, you made this whole dial out of a Grandfleur enamel. Yeah. Even like Donald Duck's hat with these little checkerboard patterns in it. And I find that to be really remarkable. So, you've taken this and you've made a major elevation. Exactly. Because the first thing I look at is this stunning Grandfleur enamel dial in multi-colors. Yes, exactly. And we put a lot of effort into making our enamel dials. And again, the core point for me with this watch is to say, in 1988, Vuitton made the watch and made these choices for one simple reason, because they didn't have a watch manufacturer, they didn't have any investments into watchmaking before, so just building everything from scratch just to make one watch was a bit intense, so that's why they went to AWC. Here, we're in a totally different scenario. We have La Fabrique Vuitton, we have all these amazing crafts in Saint-Laurent-Ferre that allows us to make the watch from start to finish, which is why we decided to go full beans on it and say, in-house movement, enamel dial, and obviously the beautiful gold case. And revisit a little bit of the design elements, because technically, obviously, it was a lot more, let's say, important to make these changes. For instance, the crown at 12 is slightly bigger, slightly smaller, just to ease the winding of the watch. And because it's an economical watch, you did not need that back then in the 1988 version. And I think it's interesting to see. What is the plan for this? Is it going to be a small series? A small series, limited edition, of 188 pieces. And again, this watch has gotten a lot of excitement. In general, we've introduced it to some of our clients already. Most of them that have seen the watch have bought the watch, so we're quite happy with that. Was it on the runway at one point? Not this one exactly, but the vintage version, yes. Was that meant to be a bit of a tease for us? Well, the watch was not supposed to leak on Instagram, which it did. It's just because, again, creative minds going together. Our artistic director for watchmaking teased a little bit the watch to our Nicolas Ghesquière, obviously our artistic director. And then he was like, oh my God, I love this watch. I want to put it on the runway. Things flow a little bit naturally in that scenario, and things work a bit differently for that. You're talking about Matthew, right? Yes, correct. I've got to say, you have a really cool team at Le Fabriquetal. Couldn't agree more. And these guys are all super fired up. They're so inspired, and everyone's going in the same direction. How important was it to you to get everyone to be like, okay, this is coming, we're now Haute Lingerie, we're going to try to be as refined as possible, and let's bring as much fresh energy as we can? Well, for me, I think the most important is, as soon as we had a clear direction of where we wanted to go, the first came with Tambour, obviously, changing up and making sure that we made watches elevated and stuff, is essentially giving a brief and knowing you can close your eyes and trust the fact that the brief will be upheld and probably exceeded as well. So, Monterey being an example, we were like, okay, should we redo it? Should we not redo it? What should we do? And then Matthew was like, we'll redo it, but trust me. And then, a couple of weeks down the road, I see a design for this, and enamel dial, in-house movement, all these different little forges, the changes, using the same typography as he used before, the Louis Vuitton tire signature, the same. He knows exactly the way we want to work and what fits within the new La Fabrique du Temps conundrum, and that's very important to us. And then, it's not only something to draw up a watch and say we should do this, but then execute it and make it perfectly through and through, and just making sure that, okay, at some point, like sometimes in meetings, I would ask all the components for the watch to be taken apart, and so I can just take two hours and look at every single component, and say like, okay, is this screw finished well enough, or things like that. And sometimes for watches that haven't done that in the past, I'm just checking just to see if this is okay, and most of the time, I'm blown away by the amount of craftsmanship and self-affair that's been put in that, and that's true for this watch as well. One of the guys that I was really impressed with, and you see his work so much in, for example, the Carpe Diem, and things like that, is Dick Stevens. Yes. This guy, I guess he's heading up all of the métiers d'art, right? Correct, yes. But he's kind of like a métiers d'art badass of himself. Oh my god, he's insane. How did you recruit him, and how did you get him so invested in what you guys are doing? Well, I mean, he worked with us for many, many years. His first project with La Fabrique du Temps, or Louis Vuitton, that was before La Fabrique du Temps in general, was in 2004, and that was a collaboration between him and Anita Porsche. So both of them worked very, very closely together. They did speedy watches back then, so like the square watch, a bit like the Monaco of Tag Heuer, and they did, I think, Paris skyline enamel and engravings on that. If you find one online, text me, I'll buy it. I want to buy that watch. There's been, I think, three or four of them that were ever made for very special clients and stuff, and the level of detail these guys go into to make these watches is completely insane. And the fact as well that LV tapped these talents so early on, when obviously they were extremely talented, but no one in the industry knew them, just getting them on board and showing the trust of LV works well, LV is serious about their watchmaking, and we want to make the highest craft possible is very important. And so that convinced Dick to join us and join with his whole atelier and create this sort of métier d'art craze that we have now at Hervé Vuitton, and we try to push the limits as well. So most of the time, they also have, how do you say, like free briefs of saying, okay, what's the max you can do, and then just go for it and we'll see what happens. And sometimes the designs are not that great, sometimes the designs are amazing. But the fact that the technicality of it has been pushed to the max is what is really interesting to me, because we know that even if the design is not in line with what LV will be doing, we know that there's going to be a little bit of a technique that can be used to then be put on the watch, which is more along the LV lines. Well, you can really see the fruits of all this labor as well. You know, it's October 6th at 9 a.m., and in one month and seven days, it's going to be the GPFG. Yes, correct. And the amount of nominations that you have are quite staggering, actually. I'm pretty happy with that, I have to say, yeah. I imagine for the team, it's also like a nice validation. Yeah, I mean, it's humbling, you know. I didn't expect it to be that way when we first started this project and first started this adventure. And I'm incredibly happy and proud that we are where we are now. I mean, obviously we haven't won anything yet. Hopefully we'll win at least one prize or something, I don't know. But I don't want to jinx anything. But just the fact of being in the final for me is already a big win, you know. Because I know the Academy votes for it, and that means that the masses have, I mean, the quote-unquote masses in the watch industry have approved our watchmaking in a way. And that's incredibly humbling and incredibly happy. I was almost in tears when I saw that we had eight watches in the finals. I was like, oh my God, okay, that's great. I sent it to my parents, I was like, hey, I'm proud. And they were like, yeah, we're proud of you, great. You know, it's like all small things like this that make me very happy. And even if we don't win anything in November, I don't care, it's okay. We've been in the finals eight times, and that's plenty enough. I'll see you in November. Yeah, see you around. Thank you, buddy. Cheers.