BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
A new watch from the small atelier that is Louis Moinet is a rare treat. The company, known for its dedication to craftsmanship and its meticulous attention to detail, spends its time making small limited numbers of watches which fascinate and intrigue. Their Derrick watches, for example, were unusual but intriguing and they’ve become synonymous for mounting most of the chronograph mechanism (which Louis Moinet himself invented) on the dial side of their watches with the Memoris collection.
Today, we’re not presenting one of those pieces. Instead, we’re introducing a watch that exudes elegance and sophistication, a departure from Louis Moinet’s usual flamboyance. The new watch, named the Speed of Sound, is the brand’s 20th-anniversary gift to itself. It comes in a 40.5mm x 18.7mm grade 5 titanium case, exuding a restrained charm, and is water-resistant to 30m, paired with a dark leather strap.
The dial is a deep and rich black colour with guilloché engraving accenting the look. It’s also been festooned with touches of red gold, including the tachymetric scale around the dial edge and the subdials. Inside the subdials at 3 and 9 O’clock are disks of Aletai meteorite, an iron meteorite found in China said to have landed at around the end of the 19th century. At 6 O’clock is a moonphase display on which sits a piece of Dhofar 457, a piece of a meteorite ejected from the moon millennia ago before eventually landing in Oman in 2001. A slightly domed disk has a hand-painted representation of the moon as well to represent the moon’s current phase. Perhaps the best photo of this can be seen in low light, where the hands and the surface of the moonphase glow in the dark.
Powering all of this majesty is the equally majestic Valjoux Calibre 88, a historic movement built from the late 1940s to the mid-70s. I have no idea where Louis Moinet finds all these old movements sitting around, but I appreciate the level of work taken to service them, make new parts for them and make them like new again. Also, the movements have been altered slightly, Louis Moinet has removed the calendar function for a cleaner look, but their love of outer space clearly persuaded them to leave the moonphase in. A lot of hand engraving has been put into these movements to make them stand out; it’s not just Breguet and A. Lange & Söhne who can do top-level movement engraving, oh no. However, given that the movements in the new watches are probably all approaching 80 years old, their specifications match, and so they have a power reserve of around 40 hours and a 2.5Hz beat rate.
Given that Louis Moinet is a low-volume maker of wristwatches and that its supply of moon rocks and old movements isn’t infinite (and also this is their 20th anniversary piece), the new Speed of Sound model is limited to just 20 examples and retails for CHF50,000.
