Introducing the Daniel Roth Tourbillon Souscription

Following LVMH’s announcement that it will be reviving Daniel Roth in earnest under the stewardship of Jean Arnault, Director of Marketing and Development of Louis Vuitton watches along with the technical powerhouse La Fabrique Du Temps, the namesake brand has now unveiled its first watch as a standalone entity – the Tourbillon Souscription. Produced in a limited edition of 20 pieces, the watch is an interpretation of the Double-Face Tourbillon ref. 187, with which the pioneering independent watchmaker made his debut back in 1988.

Originally produced in all three colours of gold as well as platinum, the Double-Face Tourbillon ref. 187 was a watch that encapsulated Roth’s pursuit of maintaining a sense of continuity from his time at Breguet while also striving for artistic progression. It incorporated many of the hallmarks he had laid out for Breguet such as the Clous de Paris guilloche pattern, blued hands, an offset dial framed by a metallic, circular-grained chapter ring and a one-minute tourbillon at six o’clock. In fact, the movement was the same Lemania tourbillon movement developed by Roth himself back then at Breguet but was reworked to accommodate his unusual double-ellipse case, incorporate a power reserve and calendar indication on the back of the watch and finished to an even higher degree with a rounded, black polished tourbillon bridge. And while the Breguet ref. 3350 he created featured a three-arm seconds indicator mounted on the tourbillon cage that swept across a single 20 seconds scale, the Double-Face Tourbillon ref. 187 had three seconds arms of varying lengths that swept over three corresponding scales as the tourbillon rotates. To accommodate the longest arm, a tiny groove had to be made to the inner wall of the case to allow it to pass through. It appears that Roth was particularly interested in designing a tourbillon that could also function as a clear and precise seconds indicator, as this continues today in his own Jean Daniel Nicolas two-minute tourbillon.