Watches produced by Louis Moinet are never shy and usually showcase a certain exuberance. However, the brand also has an impressive horological background (the first chronograph timepiece ever created, for instance) and today’s collections still feature complex movements. Not changing its usual codes, the brand today presents a new, highly ornamented piece with a tourbillon, the Louis Moinet Mogador.
As the SIHH 2019 excitement settles down, we take a look at four watches unveiled by independent watchmakers in January 2019, as an aside to the Geneva-based watch fair. Creativity, boldness of the shapes and colours, beauty of the mechanics… The independent watchmaking scene remains full of surprises.
Yesterday, we started to look at the best watches created by independent watchmakers in 2018, with more “classical” watches (if ever the indie scene could be labelled classical). Today, in the second part of this guide, we move to the most creative, daring, highly technical of them all. Sci-fi designs, unusual displays of the time, […]
The 20-second Tempograph has been part of the Louis Moinet collection since 2014. With its movement displayed in full glory, it stages an original complication: a retrograde 20-second indication producing a playful and rather hypnotic spectacle, giving material form to passing time. The visible retrograde mechanism is triggered by a ratchet gear sliding on a […]
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Yuri Gagarin. Three men we pretty much all know, cemented in history due to their endeavours in outer space. But, besides these legends among men, there are more pioneers that deserve credit for their adventures but simply appear less top-of-mind for most of us, or not known at all. Well, Louis Moinet, the inventors of the chronograph, bring us two watches celebrating Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov; the Louis Moinet SpaceWalker & Skylink.
The unique way Louis Moinet stages complications has become something of a brand signature. Its double tourbillon with kaleidoscope (Mobilis), oversized tourbillon poised with a planet in orbit (Space Mystery), dial side chronograph (Memoris) original retrograde seconds (Tempograph) are all examples of Jean-Marie Schaller’s (the brand CEO and creative director) taste for the spectacular. And the new Louis Moinet Ultravox that has been unveiled today is no exception to the rule.
Welcome to the Baroque universe of Louis Moinet watches where Jules Verne steampunk aesthetics are combined with elaborate mechanical movements and out-of-this-world materials like meteorite from Mars and 70-million-year-old fossilised palm wood. Made in exclusive, limited editions, the galaxy is a recurrent theme at Louis Moinet. Just ahead of Baselworld 2018, Louis Moinet launches Skydance, a 36mm ladies’ watch designed to celebrate the beauty of our celestial canopy offering hours, minutes and small seconds.
As SIHH 2018 excitement has settled down, it is time for us to look at some of the watches presented in Geneva (understand, not at the SIHH) that week, in particular, some we have not covered yet – or only with press pictures. LVMH brands exposed on a boat on the Geneva Lake or hotels, while several independent watchmakers showcased their latest creations in different locations across the city. Last but not least, the WPHH (World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie) was the opportunity for Frank Muller, Cvstos, Backes & Strauss and other affiliated brands to present their novelties at their Watchland site in Genthod.
Presented in 2014, the Louis Moinet 20-Second Tempograph isn’t a new watch. Yet, as it features a playful retrograde second hand staged with volumes, contrasting materials and colours, it deserves that we, at MONOCHROME, take a closer look at a watch that is both unusual, technically complex, visually daring and unique in its display.
Changes of positions have a negative influence on the way watches keep time. In 1801, Breguet patented a mechanism to negate the effects of earth attraction. A mobile carriage rotating at slow speed which houses the regulating organ of the watch, with the aim to average out positional errors. If the tourbillon has become more and more common in recent years, it remains an achievement for most watchmakers and the opportunity to demonstrate their skill and creativity.