Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/the-time-of-louis-vuitton-wei-koh/
Then Arnault launched the Tambour at Musée d’Orsay and the collective opinion was that it was good. Very good. So much so that even the odd hater who tried to attack the new watch saw their feeble lamentations dissipate quickly like the winds over Vesuvius. Because the watches, as I said, are really good.
As an aside, there is a new brand of social media journalism these days where people make their reputation by hating on things. This has gained popular appeal for the same reason tabloid journalism such as TMZ has a massive audience, because it appeals to the lowest common denominator. As an old guy, I was raised by my mother to follow the adage, “If you have nothing good say, say nothing at all.” Meaning if I don’t like something, you simply won’t hear me say much about it. But, on the other hand, if I love something or someone the way I love my fiancée and my dog, and the way I love the new Tambour, I’m going to be unabashed about it.
When asked if he was intimidated by the massive chance he took discontinuing the past and creating a new era for Louis Vuitton watches, Arnault says, “It was clear that while we had some impressive high complications, when it came to the commercial offer, there was a disconnect. To some degree, the fact that watches are not our largest category gave us a certain creative freedom when it came to the redesign of the Tambour and Escale.
My father always says, ‘Start with the product first and everything else will follow.’ I used this philosophy in the approach to recreating our watches.”
OK, so now it’s time to talk about the Escale. I’ve said before that it is great. How do I qualify this? Let me quote my hero, the great gentleman gourmand Hannibal Lector, “We begin by coveting what we see every day.” (Yes, I do sometimes imagine ingesting the livers of the more irritating elements in this world with some favas beans and a nice Chianti.) And the immediate visual impression created by the Escale is that it is irrefutably appealing in the way that Catherine Deneuve was in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, undeniably gorgeous, with that wonderful sense of an ingénue taking her first small step toward superstardom. So, too, with these watches which have defined an all-new watchmaking design language that is completely original, highly intoxicating, and that cleverly riffs on Louis Vuitton’s roots as a trunk maker while replete with enough hardcore watch nerd nuances that they had me grinning ear to ear about the Escale.
Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/the-time-of-louis-vuitton-wei-koh/