Louis Vuitton Escale: A Journey into the World of Advanced Complications
The Escale collection embarks on a new journey. Escale—French for "port of call"—has been deeply connected with the essence of travel and synonymous with the romance of discovery. After being renewed in 2024 with refined design language and a focus solely on timekeeping, the collection now expands with complications befitting haute horlogerie. Four new calibers and five new models join the permanent collection.
Inspired by the Maison's legendary trunks, the new pieces symbolize a decisive evolution of the Escale collection. Among them, the emblematic Escale World Time has been elevated through new savoir-faire and in-house movements, and returns adorned in platinum cases—a first in Escale history. The five new models each express the spirit of travel in different ways while being connected by a common theme: the pursuit of harmony between movement, purpose, and design.
"This new chapter of Escale is an extension of the transformation we've been undertaking over the past four years. Elevating a historic icon like the World Time to new standards of craftsmanship was a significant challenge for us, but we achieved a remarkable difference. Every detail, from the case and dial to the movement finishing, has been carefully considered. The skilled adoption of the Twin Zone complication, which displays times from different zones around the world instantly, is also one of the elements that further enhances the appeal of the new Escale collection. This is a clever twist that Michel and Enrico added to a complication from ten years ago," says Jean Arnault, Director of Louis Vuitton's watch division.
Escale World Time: The Icon Returns
Since its debut in 2014, the Escale World Time has been a signature model of the Escale collection. This iconic piece, which features the complication synonymous with the collection and simultaneously displays all 24 time zones around the world, returns in 2026 with two refined platinum models that fuse métiers d'art (artistic craftsmanship) and haute horlogerie.
The first model reinterprets the icon with a world time ring painted in miniature and a sophisticated grain-finished blue center dial that celebrates the texture of the historic Monogram canvas while enhancing time readability. While maintaining the familiar world time motif, the newly developed in-house LFT VO 12.01 movement elevates the complication and announces a new era for the icon.
The second model, the Escale World Time Tourbillon, follows the original configuration while further enhancing artistry. The flag designs are rendered in grand feu enamel, and a flying tourbillon placed in the center transforms from stillness to motion at the heart of the dial.
A World of Vivid Colors
The distinctive dial of the Escale World Time features 24 flags representing major cities around the world, each hand-painted one by one. Miniature painting is a handicraft technique mastered by La Fabrique des Arts, the métiers d'art specialist atelier within La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. The work is extremely precise, applying 35 colors one by one using ultra-fine brushes. To fix the paint, the dial must be carefully dried in an oven after each color, requiring a full week to complete a single dial.
The flag designs are inspired by Louis Vuitton's historical motifs—the Matelassé, the crossed diamond-shaped stitching found in trunk linings, and the signature Damier canvas. The renowned Monogram Flower pattern is also reproduced in miniature, along with the distinctive "V" mark of Gaston-Louis Vuitton, grandson of founder Louis Vuitton, symbolizing the city of Paris.
The flags surrounding the dial of the Escale World Time Tourbillon are all expressed in enamel technique rather than regular pigments. Each color is applied by hand and undergoes firing more than 40 times across five different layers at temperatures ranging from 730°C to 840°C. The vibrant greens and soft pink hues are extremely delicate, withstanding only one or two firings, so they are applied last. When the completed enamel disc is carefully polished, it radiates depth and brilliance. The dial's creation requires 80 hours (two weeks) of meticulous work by skilled enamel artisans.
Escale in Platinum
The Escale World Time debuts in platinum for the first time, bringing new gravitas and presence to the collection. A discreet saffron-colored sapphire set on the case back accentuates the quiet allure of this precious metal.
"Platinum has a certain weight, both literally and symbolically. It's a material that has long commanded respect in the atelier, celebrated for its beauty while also revered for the difficulty of working with it," explains Mathieu Eggis.
Design for Travelers
The Escale World Time is equipped with the newly developed caliber LFT VO 12.01. This automatic movement, entirely developed and manufactured in-house at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, embodies the atelier's passion for traditional haute horlogerie. The World Time caliber allows easy reading of the time across 24 different time zones, with both the reference city and time easily adjustable via the crown. A jumping hour disc further enhances visibility, allowing instantaneous time reading on the dial.
In addition to the standard model, a new Escale World Time Tourbillon debuts. This exceptional model houses the in-house caliber LFT VO 05.01, an automatic movement with the complication from which it takes its name—a tourbillon—positioned at the center of the dial.
To place a flying tourbillon at the center of the Escale World Time dial required a fundamental rethinking of the caliber's structure. The movement development team at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton needed to integrate two complications—the rotating city disc and the tourbillon—within the same space, an achievement requiring exceptional precision and spatial ingenuity.
The result is a star-shaped Monogram Flower tourbillon that rotates once every 60 seconds. Components normally hidden are revealed through the flying cage. The open design enhances the play of light and draws the eye to the center of the dial.
"In the World Time, movement has always been important. Not just how to move between time zones, but how to express that the watch itself is alive. As a result, placing the flying tourbillon in the center amplified the energy and gave the complication a visible heartbeat," says Michel Navas.
Escale Twin Zone: New Precision for Universal Travel Complications
For decades, travelers circling the globe have sought ways to accurately keep track of time. Faced with this challenge, two enduring solutions emerged. One is the world time complication, which simultaneously displays the time across 24 major time zones. The other is the dual time watch, which elegantly and simply displays two specific time zones. However, neither approach effectively addressed time zones with offsets of 30 or 45 minutes from Coordinated Universal Time.
The Escale Twin Zone addresses this longstanding challenge through a mechanism that is simple yet complex and sophisticated, expanding the concept of traditional travel complications. Available in two interpretations—a warm rose gold version and a platinum haute joaillerie edition—the Twin Zone embodies the high precision and versatility that suits modern travelers.
Displaying Any Two Time Zones on a Single Dial
The Escale Twin Zone positions two sets of hands on a single axis, a structure that sets it apart from conventional GMT watches that only added a single hour hand. Furthermore, by adding independently adjustable minute hands, it overcomes this limitation and enables minute-level precision adjustment for all time zones worldwide, including regions with non-standard offsets from Coordinated Universal Time. In addition to the thick hands marking local time, skeleton hands indicate home time.
The skeleton hands can normally be hidden, achieving the calm legibility of a time-only watch on the dial. Only the discreet day and night indicator at the top of the engraved globe hints at the multi-time zone functionality.
The true value of the Twin Zone becomes apparent the moment you arrive at a new destination. Adjusting to local time requires only a light pull of the crown—intuitive, easy, and quick. When moving between the 24 standard time zones, the local hour hand can be adjusted forward or backward in one-hour increments while keeping the skeleton minute hand hidden.
The ability to independently adjust the additional minute hand allows displaying any two time zones worldwide with minute-level precision. A day and night indicator linked to home time enables the wearer to see at a glance whether it is day or night in their home country. All adjustments are made via a two-position crown, maintaining the Escale's clean case form.
A New Standard for Travel Complications
The innovative functions of the Escale Twin Zone are concentrated in the new in-house caliber LFT VO 15.01, developed at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
Developing a movement that positions four hands on a single axis presented unique challenges. Unlike traditional GMT displays, the Twin Zone structure required technical alignment of a fourth hand that needs precise adjustment. The 15-minute and 30-minute adjustment mechanism was equally complex, allowing wearers to set home time with complete accuracy even in regions with non-standard offsets from Coordinated Universal Time.
Precious Platinum Model
The new piece enveloped in the sparkle of platinum features an aventurine dial where particles of light shine like a flowing constellation, evoking a starry night sky. Perfectly faceted diamonds framing the dial flange accentuate the celestial brilliance, adding structure and rhythm to a composition that is architectural yet dreamlike and graceful.
The dial's intricate gem-setting features 120 baguette-cut diamonds surrounding the aventurine center engraved with meridians and parallels. Blue studs marking the hours, set on the baguette-set dial flange, reflect the deep blue of the aventurine, creating visual harmony that unifies all elements of the dial.
This celestial rhythm continues to the case and bezel, with the case band set with 170 baguette-cut diamonds, including three rows of invisible setting. Additionally, a rose-cut diamond adorns the crown, and 11 baguette diamonds embellish the folding buckle. As a final touch, a single saffron-colored sapphire is set on the polished case back, a brilliant testament to the platinum case. This fusion of haute joaillerie and haute horlogerie embodies the Maison's wide-ranging technical prowess.
Escale Minute Repeater: The Sound of Tradition
The Escale Minute Repeater brings new emotion to the Escale universe. While the World Time and Twin Zone embody the essence of travel through purpose-driven functionality, the Minute Repeater vividly expresses the Maison's savoir-faire in watchmaking.
Elegance Through Guilloché Engraving
The beauty of the Escale Minute Repeater, defined by the complexity of its in-house caliber, begins with the dial. The interplay of legibility, geometric shapes, and traditional savoir-faire has been carefully considered, while subtle references to the Maison's iconic trunks are woven throughout. Highlighting this connection are discreet details scattered throughout. Markers resembling screws that evoke the metal fittings characteristic of trunks adorn both ends of the minute track. Here, traditional guilloché engraving takes center stage, beautifully merging this centuries-old decorative technique with modern architectural layout.
The center dial, hand-finished using a traditional rose engine, is decorated with a flame guilloché pattern that radiates from the center, catching and reflecting light. The motif, finished through repeated work with tools in unshakable delicacy, achieves excellence in both depth and pressure uniformity. The luminous surface draws the eye toward the retrograde minute hand. The guilloché-engraved dial, completed after a total of 60 hours of skilled craftsmanship, then undergoes meticulous coloring work to achieve its characteristic gray hue.
Resonant Design
Housed within the signature Escale case is the hand-wound caliber LFT SO 13.01, born from the watchmaking tradition shared by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton and Gérald Genta. It was developed by Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini, who worked with Gérald Genta in the 1990s.
The combination of minute repeater and jumping hour is a rare achievement in contemporary watchmaking. Its realization required clearing the challenge of synchronizing two independent time-calculation systems—the hammer strike mechanism and the jumping display—while maintaining both reliability and energy efficiency. This perfect alignment, which guarantees harmony between sight and sound, underscores the technical excellence of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini developed a solution that guarantees perfect harmony between visible time and audible time, drawing on decades of experience in developing complications cultivated through long collaboration with design master Genta.
All acoustic elements of the caliber are perfectly tuned. The black-polished hammers and gongs are hand-formed, cut, and adjusted to ensure optimal vibration and amplitude. Meticulously tuned relying on the ears of skilled artisans, they achieve crystal-clear tones with remarkable clarity and volume. The minute repeater's sound resonates clearly thanks to an almost silent centrifugal speed governor. Fixed by an octagonal bridge reminiscent of Genta's incomparable aesthetics, this mechanism visibly connects the legacies of Louis Vuitton and Gérald Genta.
The LFT SO 13.01 is not only exceptional in structure but also meets the highest standards of haute horlogerie, requiring over four weeks of assembly and finishing work. Finishing details include traditional Côtes de Genève decoration, hand-polished anglage (beveling), and delicate snailing on the baseplate, with the craftsmanship of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton shining throughout.
At first glance, the Escale Minute Repeater conceals its complex nature. However, upon closer inspection, one discovers that the slide activating the minute repeater is integrated into the lug design. This is a subtle yet meaningful departure from traditional minute repeater design. This innovative approach posed a significant development challenge, as it required rethinking the mechanism to ensure both functional and aesthetic harmony. The result is a seamless design that maintains the watch's elegance while preserving the technical excellence of the complication.
Homecoming
The new models joining the Escale collection become guideposts for the Maison's new journey, fusing traditional haute horlogerie with the essence of travel.
The World Time, which maps out memories, evokes a poetic atlas woven from color and light. The Twin Zone pursues pure precision, simultaneously displaying two time zones with minute-level accuracy and easy legibility. And the Minute Repeater gives voice to this harmony, elevating movement into sound.
Each watch embodies a common ideal—the harmony of design, function, and sensation. At La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, this ideal becomes a unique language, where exceptional craftsmanship and the essence of travel unite.
About Louis Vuitton
Since its founding in 1854, Louis Vuitton has continually delivered unique designs that combine innovation and style with the highest quality. Through products including travel luggage, bags, and accessories, the Maison faithfully carries on the "spirit of travel" created by founder Louis Vuitton—creative yet elegant and practical. It was "audacity" that built the Louis Vuitton story. Respecting tradition while opening doors throughout history to architects, artists, and designers, the Maison has pioneered fields including ready-to-wear, shoes, accessories, watches and fine jewelry, and fragrances. These carefully crafted products stand as proof of Louis Vuitton's dedication to craftsmanship.
For more information, visit the Louis Vuitton official website at https://www.louisvuitton.com.
