Perfect match for Louis Vuitton Cup

LOUIS Vuitton forges a place as a maker of unique and innovative complications with its new racing watch.

Benoit-Louis Vuitton

THERE are three things that nearly all watch brands yearn for when releasing new models. First, they love anniversaries, be they of a model or line of watches or of some broader aspect of the company in general.

They're also very proud of their sponsorships and associations with other brands and events and will utilise them in the design of new models. And, of course, they love showing off innovations in horology (that's what Baselworld is all about after all).

Only one of these elements needs to be in place for the launch of a watch, but this year Louis Vuitton - a 159-year-old luxury brand that has been in the watchmaking business for only the past 11 of them - managed to get all three elements into one watch: the Tambour twin chrono match racing watch.

The watch is to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Louis Vuitton Cup, the yacht racing series that precedes the America's Cup and determines the challenger of the cup. That's the anniversary and the sponsorship parts taken care of. To understand the innovation part, you need to know a a little bit about America's Cup racing. The Louis Vuitton Cup, which was to start yesterday in San Francisco, is a knockout series in which boats from around the world compete for the right to challenge the holder of the America's Cup.

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(Significantly for Australia, the first Louis Vuitton Cup took place in 1983 and the winner of the first LV Cup was Australia II, which went on to win the America's Cup that year.) In the America's Cup only two boats compete in a series of heats and there is often only seconds between them. The Tambour twin chrono is unique in watchmaking in that it can simultaneously measure two distinct times and display the difference between these two times at once on the same dial and all with a single push function located at 7 o'clock.

"It's a simple watch that is not so simple," says Benoit- Louis Vuitton, head of special watch orders and other limited edition watch projects for Louis Vuitton.

"We have people who work at our La Fabrique du Temps Manufacture [Louis Vuitton's watchmaking facility at La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland] who I like to call crazy people with a lot of imagination who are always trying to come up with new things and new complications."

The unique innovation in the watch is based on a movement that has four different motors, three of which are dedicated to the bi-chronograph function.

"The biggest challenge in creating this watch is to ensure the perfect synchronisation between the movements which can simultaneously or consecutively start and stop," says Vuitton. The motors for the bi-chronograph function need to be hand-wound with the crown located at 4 o'clock, while the hour and minute display is an automatic movement. The mechanism for this watch, which is in a limited edition of just 30 pieces, took four years to develop, according to Vuitton, and the single push bi-chronograph function with differential display has been patented.

It sounds complicated but using the watch in a race is incredibly simple. The first push of the button at 7 o'clock starts the time on the two lower counters. When the first yacht crosses the finish line, you push the button a second time and the race time of the first yacht is shown in minutes and seconds on the dial at 7 o'clock (and the counter on the dial at 4 o'clock continues). When the second boat crosses the finish line, a third push displays that boat's race time at 4 o'clock and the difference between the two boats is displayed on the counter at 12 o'clock. A fourth push then resets all the counters for another race.

The Tambour twin chrono comes in a 45.5mm, 18-carat white gold case with a black alligator strap and is water resistant to 10 metres. This is a watch that will put Louis Vuitton on the map as a manufacturer of unique and innovative complications. Given the development required to make this timepiece and its limited production, it comes with a price tag of 57,000 (about $79,000) and it will perfectly suit any one of the moguls behind the America's Cup syndicates this year.

Louis Vuitton also launched two major watch collections at Basel this year that will appeal to a bigger market than just 30 people. The Tambour Evolution, as the name suggests, is a new interpretation of the brand's iconic Tambour line of watches with which it launched its watchmaking business in 2002.

The design of the unique drum-shaped watch has been refined and is sharper, more masculine shape than the more rounded original Tambour. It's finished in an innovative material called black MMC (metal matrix composite), which is a virtually indestructible material used in the engines of Formula One cars. It's also the first Louis Vuitton watch to come exclusively with a metal bracelet. The Tambour Evolution is water resistant to 100 metres and comes in 43mm and 45mm versions in stainless steel and a 45mm version in 18-carat pink gold.

The thing about the Tambour watch is that, as well as being a shape unique to Louis Vuitton, it's quite big and chunky. So this year the company has launched the Tambour Monogram, a significantly thinner watch that keeps the same distinctive shape but inverts it. "Ladies have been requesting a thinner watch for some time," says Vuitton. "The idea was to have a little sister to the Tambour, which means that we didn't want it to be totally different; so if you look at the shape, it's the Tambour shape that we reversed and reworked. It's a quartz movement [there is also an automatic model as well as a tourbillon] which means it's accessible, but it's not just an entry price for the sake of having an entry price. This watch is like a little black dress - something that you can wear all the time and anywhere.