Hands-On With Louis Vuitton’s Fashionable, Lugless, Ceramic-Cased Monterey Watches
One of my favorite watch brands to cover is Louis Vuitton, because of how unpredictable their new release or next brand direction will be. The Paris-based luxury firm clearly makes a lot more than just watches, but even within its watch catalog, it benefits from a level of diversity that few high-end firms enjoy. Different people want different things in a Louis Vuitton timepiece, and the company tries to satisfy a variety of requests. That’s because at the end of the day, Louis Vuitton enjoys the flexibility of a fashion firm without the rigidity of a heritage product firm. Louis Vuitton might design and manufacture watches on par with the best brands in Switzerland, but it is hardly tied to any specific look, theme, style, or character. That makes Louis Vuitton a wild card, and I enjoy the company and its team for that virtue. The wild card watches on my wrist in this hands-on article are the snazzy Louis Vuitton Monterey Ceramic watches, the costlier 18k gold version of which I reviewed last year
I recommend you read aBlogtoWatch’s debut of the Louis Vuitton Monterey Ceramic watches for more background on the design and how the Monterey fits into the larger Louis Vuitton family. In short, even though the Monterey is a modern remake of a watch known as the LVII released in small numbers in 1988, the Monterey doesn’t really look like anything else in the Louis Vuitton wristwatch product family — and that is intentional. The Monterey is meant as “horology light” to balance out the technology- and craftsmanship-heavy timepieces that Louis Vuitton has been designing and producing from their Geneva-based La Fabrique du Temps facility over the last few years. Jean Arnault, head of watches at Louis Vuitton, has poured himself into making sure that the brand’s watches are received with the utmost respect by seasoned collectors and connoisseurs. In large part, he succeeded in his goals and even went a bit further. With that said, such elaborate efforts, including novel movements and shapes, are not always easily received by the masses. Louis Vuitton does need a handful of simple, more approachable luxury watches that are still tied to the high-end nature of the brand’s watchmaking maison today. That’s where watches like the Monterey come in. The case might be equipped with a beautiful, in-house-made LFT MA01.02 automatic movement, but the entire package is simple enough for anyone to appreciate and wear.