Finnish watchmaker Kari Voutilainen and luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton partnered to create a horological masterpiece.
The Louis Vuitton x Kari Voutilainen LVKV-02 GMR 6 is presented in a 40.5 mm x 12.54 mm tantalum case, which features a hand-polished platinum bezel, caseback, lugs, and crown — creating a subtle contrast when juxtaposed against the hand finished satin case.
Large white gold Roman numerals mark the hours, each hand-applied to the multicolored hour circle (inspired by ancient stained-glass windows), that was hand-decorated by Maryna Bossy, an artisan in the Métiers d’Art workshop of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. Incredibly, the process of creating each hour ring, requires 28 different colors of paint, 32 hours of painting, and eight hours of firing.
The center of the gold dial features exquisite hand guilloché-work by Voutilainen’s workshop (which the brand is renowned for) using vintage lathes, which take multiple days to complete. An intricate pattern nodding to the French house’s Damier motif sets this guilloché-work apart from other variations. Voutilainen’s team also produced the hand engraving, decoration (in Louis Vuitton’s signature saffron and blue), and enameling for the sun and moon used on the day-and-night indicator.
As one would expect for a watch costing over half a million dollars, the case and dial finishing are impeccable. For the movement, the details are equally impressive.
From the signature look of the large balance wheel and traversing balance bridge, to the luscious striped bridges, with hand-beveled and polished edges, this is a horological work of art. The mainspring barrel features a multi-colored miniature painting by artisan Maryna Bossy, a detail underscored by a process that takes 16 hours to paint the 27 different colors, with five sessions in the kiln and eight hours of firing — tying the impressive dial side to the movement side.
The 254 component manually wound three-quarter plate movement has two escapement wheels providing a direct impulse, a beat rate of 2.5Hz, with a Phillips overcoil, and an internal Grossman curve — resulting in a high level of precision and up to 65 hours of power reserve.
In addition to the hours, minutes, and small seconds displays, there’s a semi-circle power reserve indicator subdial at 12 o’clock, and the 24-hour GMT disc (home time) that’s inside the small seconds ring has a day/night indicator.
Perhaps best of all, the crown not only sets the time and winds the mainspring but it can also be pushed to jump-set the local time (the large centrally mounted hour hand), in one-hour increments. Notably, with past Voutilainen GMT and GMT-6 models, the crown push button advanced the 24-hour subdial instead of the main hour hand, meaning the configuration is new in this iteration.
Like with the first collaboration of this kind, between Louis Vuitton and Rexhepi (Ref. LVRR-01), Louis Vuitton ties luxury fashion with top-tier watchmaking, for those with the deepest pockets and appreciation of high watchmaking and fashion.
The Louis Vuitton x Kari Voutilainen LVKV-02 GMR 6 is limited to 5 pieces and each comes in a bespoke Louis Vuitton travel trunk, bearing a hand-painted rendition of the dial and edition number on the front as well as the signatures of Voutilainen and Arnault inside. Based on comment sections, which often provide a far better gauge of customer sentiment than publications trying to curry the favor of LVMH, one might wonder why Arnault would sign such an artistic piece (if he was not one of the artists who created it).
Admittedly, I tend to like everything produced by Kari Voutilainen, and this gorgeous timepiece is no exception.
Photos by Louis Vuitton/Kari Voutilainen.
