BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Would you think of Louis Vuitton as a maker of high-tech diving watches? No? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, their history of watches has been a lot more dramatic than a simple diving watch, but it’s true. It was in mid-2021 when we saw the Tambour Street Diver, a watch with a strange name and a design inspired by Super Compressor divers of old. Now, to follow the watches from 2021, Louis Vuitton releases two new watches as a part of the Tambour Street Diver collection, and these ones have chronographs.
I quite like the look of these watches; they have some diving elements to them but aren’t afraid of mixing up other design cues. I guess you could say the design is progressively modern thanks to the writing on the rubber strap and the contrast between the dial colour and the neon-like accents.
These watches definitely won’t go unnoticed. They’re 46mm x 14mm, so not quite Seamaster Planet Ocean Chronograph chunky but closer than you think. Both watches are made of stainless steel with colouration coming from a PVD treatment. It’s interesting that Louis Vuitton chose to make the blue model silver and blue, while nearly all parts of the black version are PVD black except for the lugs, pushers and crown. One thing to note is that the water resistance is 100m, that’s plenty for swimming mind you. Perhaps Louis Vuitton realised that its clients probably wouldn’t go scuba diving ever and so left it to the minimum 100m required by ISO to call a watch a diving watch.
Inside the new Tambour Streed Diver Chronograph watches is a self-winding ETA 2894-2 movement. If this is the first time you’ve heard of Louis Vuitton being a watchmaker, you might be surprised by this movement choice, especially given the price. It should be noted that while Louis Vuitton is a watchmaker and has been for a while, it’s not necessarily a movement maker, I seem to recall quite a few of their watches having off-the-shelf movements. While it might lose some horological prestige in your mind, it will make servicing the watch easier down the line, especially if Louis Vuitton decides it doesn’t want to make watches anymore. This chronograph movement has a 4Hz beat rate and a 42-hour power reserve.
Neither of these funky and modern diving watches is a limited edition and is priced at €9,505 a piece.
Visit Louis Vuitton here.
