The Maison is taking it all the way back with a 2025 take on its first-ever watch.
Sometimes the best way forward is to look to the past. And for Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking division, that means going back to the start with the Monterey.
Okay, a little history lesson. Back in 1988, Louis Vuitton enlisted esteemed architect and designer Gae Aulenti – fresh from redesigning a Parisian train station into the riverside Musée d’Orsay – to craft its first ever wristwatch. The brief was to make a timepiece that spoke to the Maison’s ties with luxury travel, resulting in two watches: the LV I and LV II. The LV I had all the bells and whistles – a railway track, date displays, GMT function and an alarm, housed in a gold case. The LV II was a simpler form of sophistication – featuring the alarm as its sole complication and contained in a smaller, 37mm ceramic case. Both, to this day, remain collector gems in their own right.
And this quirky horological number is now gaining a new lease of life, thanks to La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. The Swiss watchmaking workshop, acquired by LV in 2011, is reviving The Maison’s first model with some changes. Now clocking in with a 39mm yellow gold pebble case and Grand Feu enamel dial, it’s time-only and nods to the original with red and blue accents on the twin hour and minute scales. On the inside, things go up a notch, however. This time around, the Monterey is powered by an in-house-crafted automatic movement, with a 45-hour power reserve. To make it even more special, it will be released in a limited run of 188 pieces, honouring the year of creation.
In recent years, you might have seen vintage Monterey watches on Tyler, the Creator’s wrist, with the pebble case and rarity aligning with his taste for lesser-seen, obscure-shaped dress watches. More recently, Louis Vuitton’s Women’s Creative Director Nicolas Ghesquière included the watch in his Autumn/Winter 2025 runway collection, again honouring the house’s legacy of travel. The move made sense, tapping into a surging appetite for smaller vintage watches both among hardcore collectors and fashion heads, too. And it seriously stoked up the hype in the watch community, leading to many speculating a return. Well, now, the wait is over.
La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton’s recent winning streak with technical watches has been powered by their willingness to celebrate the brand’s heritage. Just take the 2023 Tambour release (which revamped The House’s 2002 sports watch with an integrated bracelet and updated LFT023 calibre movement). With the re-launched Monterey, they strike once again, showing that, sometimes, the best way forward is to look back.
