Behind the Scenes at La Fabrique du Temps
I visited Louis Vuitton's watchmaking factory, and have some thoughts to share
Have you even heard of Meyrin? Honestly, I hadn’t, until I went there to visit La Fabrique du Temps (LFdT) … right next to the Chopard headquarters, as it happens. This visit to Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking nerve centre was quite informative because while I’d previously read others’ stories about LV’s watchmaking HQ1, I actually learned a few interesting things for myself.
Independent Transition
LFdT began as the vision of Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini, two craftsmen whose careers span the golden era of modern Swiss complications. Both men cut their teeth at well known houses (Genta during its heyday in the 1990s, Patek, AP, Franck Muller), with Navas working on early tourbillon development in the 1980s, and both of them contributing to the creative explosion at Gerald Genta when that company defined what exotic complications could be.
Like most other watchmakers who started out working for others and building movements for prestigious clients… Navas and Barbasini tried independence for the first time in 2004, when they teamed up with Mathias Buttet (who had been technical director at Franck Muller) to form BNB Concept. Fun fact you may not have known, is that the corporation’s initials came from their combined surnames, Barbasini, Navas, and Buttet.
This outfit developed high complication movements for various brands, and by the way, even Rexhep Rexhepi spent about two years there as a watchmaker before moving on to F.P. Journe and eventually founding Akrivia. You may have known that some of the early Akrivia (AK models) actually used BNB base calibres, but now you know why.
Anyway, the partnership didn’t last, and by 2007, creative differences (mainly about growth pace, from what I understand) led Navas and Barbasini to walk away and start fresh - just the two of them this time. Buttet kept running BNB into the ground until 2010, when Jean-Claude Biver (Hublot) came in to acquire the assets, and Buttet ended up as Hublot’s R&D director.
After Navas and Barbasini left in 2007 and founded La Fabrique du Temps, their goal was to create a space where technical innovation could flourish without “corporate compromise.” They got lucky with the timing, and it turned out that complications popped just as they kicked off their new venture; their early client list included Jacob & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels, Speake-Marin and Laurent Ferrier. From what I’ve read, they developed a reputation for solving impossible technical challenges (more on this later).
The Louis Vuitton connection seemed to have happened almost by accident. Navas and Barbasini had developed a prototype for this wild concept (at the time) called the Spin Time - a watch displaying hours through rotating cubes. They needed a case that could accommodate the unusual proportions, and they thought LV’s drum-shaped Tambour case was perfect. One conversation led to another, and by 2011, LVMH had acquired the entire operation.
Even though these two weren’t at the factory when I visited, I actually got to spend some time with them earlier that day when I visited the LV showroom in the Ritz. I’ll tell you upfront, these two are absolute lads. They definitely aren’t corporate executives or marketing figures; they are just nerdy watchmakers who probably still feel most at-home in front of a watchmaking bench. Navas apparently assembled one of the world’s first tourbillon wristwatches at AP in 1986. The Crazy Hours complication from Franck Muller which became such an icon was all Navas’s work. They were sharing some cool stories with me about their time working alongside Daniel Roth himself, but I’ll save those for another day.
Nevertheless, we sat down to discuss the new Daniel Roth pieces and the new minute repeater under the Gerald Genta brand, and this led to a super technical (but fun) discussion about the pitch and tempo of minute repeaters, and how they both spent countless hours fine-tuning different aspects of the case and movement to optimise the sound it creates.
Side bar regarding this watch - I learned from Tim Mosso’s video that this in fact represents a return to what made the Genta brand legendary in the first place. Some may believe that Patek dominated minute repeaters in the 1980s and early 1990s (I did), but Tim reckons it was apparently Genta leading the charge back then. Founded by the man himself in 1969, the brand moved into ultra-thin minute repeaters by 1981 and became the go-to workshop for serious collectors.
Genta, he says, was often producing multiples of the number of repeaters that Patek managed per year back then. The brand operated alongside Daniel Roth from the same facilities until the mid-1990s, when both were sold to the Hourglass. Bulgari then acquired them in 2000, and mostly phased both brands out after 2010. When LVMH took control of Bulgari in 2011, they sat on the intellectual property until the Genta brand made a tentative comeback in 2019. So really, this minute repeater signals their return to the complication that built their reputation.
Having heard it in person, I think it sounds great. It’s still 300k, and while the onyx dial is lovely, and the case is actually quite nice on the wrist, I remain unsure about how to describe the ideal client buying this watch. Absent any meaningful story, it seems like a tough sell, even if the watchmaking and effort in creating this piece are, objectively, praiseworthy. On the other hand, LV has no shortage of HNW clients, and there are only 10 pieces, so perhaps this is a moot point.
Scale vs Ambition
Returning to the LFdT story, the (current) factory opened in 2014, and pulled together all Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking operations into a single purpose-built space. Don’t expect gleaming production lines or armies of white-coated technicians (though they do all wear white coats!). The reality is actually a lot more intimate than I had imagined. I counted fewer than 30 watchmakers in the watchmaking area, total.
Collectively, LFdT are responsible for all LV’s high-end grand complications, Daniel Roth, Gerald Genta, and “regular” LV watches. The guilloché department had one person in at the time, but I was told there are three people in total who work on the restored vintage guilloche machines. Dial decoration involved maybe a dozen specialists working on enamelling, micro painting and so on, along with a couple of hand-engravers. The one engraver showed me a hand-engraved katana (below) on the Tambour Bushido Automata which he had created, and it was actually insane to see what this kid can do under a microscope.
I say all this, because I think the consideration of scale matters enormously. Each watchmaker in LFdT follows their pieces from initial assembly through to final testing. The person assembling and then adjusting your movement’s regulation will be the same one setting your hands and sealing your case. A few other factories (such as F.P. Journe) do this too, and it adds to the complexity and time constraints associated with production and servicing each watch. This is probably why it is considered ‘desirable’ (and why this is an approach that is less prevalent in the industry).
Jacquemart Watchmaking
Side bar: Unofficial editor said this section is an interruption of the story flow, any my response was that I don’t want to rehash all the boring bits about the factory tour itself, because the links in the footnotes already provide that. Instead, I want to dive deeper into the aspect of the tour which was most interesting to me and build on this to reach the conclusions I wanted to convey. So, yeah… just FYI!
You can read others’ walkthroughs for yourself if you’re curious about the individual aspects of the entire operation. For me, what completely blew my mind during my visit was something I had never properly understood before, and that is the sheer complexity involved in creating jacquemart automatons; so that’s what I will focus on. This is easily the most complex thing they do in this entire building, and I found it fascinating.
Many people might think these are just minute repeaters with decorative figures attached; they are anything but that! These are actually minute repeaters combined with time-on-demand displays and jumping hour complications, all wrapped around intricate animation sequences that have to work in perfect mechanical harmony. Take a look:
These are a couple of examples; namely the Tambour Carpe Diem and the Escale en Amazonie pocket watch. The technical challenges here go way beyond traditional complications, because these watchmakers are solving physics and design problems that most traditional watchmakers never even encounter.
The process starts with a creative team dreaming up what they want to create and animate. Maybe it’s a skull opening its jaws to reveal the words “carpe diem”, or Amazon wildlife coming to life around a flowing river. Either way, this design brief gets handed over to the “Movement Conception” department who have to figure out how to make it all work mechanically.
After this, there is a lot of collaboration between these creative and technical teams. There is a back-and-forth process which requires solving problems most of us never consider when thinking about watchmaking. They have to think about questions like what angle the automated figure should move at for maximum visual impact, how long the sequence should last to create drama without compromising function, how to make a mechanical parrot look convincingly parrot-like when it moves its head, and maybe how to time everything to synchronise with the chiming sequence… hopefully you get the idea.
This is the end result, where they eventually create a bespoke calibre which moves everything exactly as they require (this movement below, is for the Escale en Amazonie pocket watch):
The whole process can take up to a year, because although they are making certain aesthetic choices, they are also simultaneously solving engineering challenges which require completely rethinking how a watch movement functions. The designers might want a 30-second animation sequence, but the engineers explain that the minute repeater barrel also powers the automation, so anything over 18 seconds will make the chimes start to sound weak (they typically aim for 14-16 seconds of animation).
At this point, the current technical solution they use is elegant in that it is modular. Rather than reinventing everything from scratch, they essentially “plug in” their automation calibre on top of their existing minute repeater module. So instead of having to design a new minute repeater each time, they only have to design the calibre which automates the dial animation, and then place it above the repeater caliber, shown below. The automation itself is them powered by the same power source which runs the repeater.
Afterthoughts
A lot of other coverage of LFdT focuses on dial-making facilities or Geneva Seal certification, and sure, maybe those aspects are noteworthy, but the real story to me was this little group of exceptionally skilled artisans and engineers who are advancing an entire field of mechanical artistry.
In general, the jacquemart work feels like some of the most sophisticated automaton development in modern watchmaking. Doing these pieces is more than just making things move around; they need to create artwork which comes alive, and turn it into an emotionally engaging mechanical theatre on your wrist, and then also ensure that it happens to tell time and chime it too.
My tour guide was a watchmaker and technical employee i.e. not a commercial guy; so he simply declined to answer any questions about commercial decisions (I asked many!). When I asked about the Tambour using an ETAchron regulator rather than a free-sprung balance, he smiled knowingly, but said nothing more.
The point of my question was based on a realisation that this factory can clearly deliver epic watchmaking at the highest level - that much was obvious within 30 minutes of my arrival. The difference is that their ultra-high-end pieces sell for six or seven figures, and I suppose the Tambour needed to be created to hit a target price, and probably a target margin too. This meant that they had to make trade offs, and the ETAchron regulator was one of those compromises.
I believe LV should push the development of their ‘regular’ watch lines to the point where there are fewer compromises. When you can build jacquemart automatons that would make 18th-century clockmakers weep with envy, there’s no reason to accept things like ETAchron regulators in regular watches. Yes, this feedback may seem petty, but if this factory were to put the same passion and commitment to excellence they show in their highest-end pieces, into the more “pedestrian” pieces, I think they are well placed to blow the competition away on merit, with no need to rely on press or marketing at all. The collectors themselves will line up all on their own.
A dear friend reminded me of a similar story which unfolded nearly 30 years ago (and coincidentally, is located right across from LFdT!). Many may not recall how this happened, but the year 1996 changed everything for Chopard. After decades of being known primarily for jewellery and out sourced movements, they finally dropped their first proper in-house calibre - the 1.96. This was Chopard’s declaration that they deserved a seat at the haute horology table.
The calibre 1.96 emerged from their new Fleurier manufacture, and as demonstrated by the desirability of these pieces today, they weren’t fvcking around. COSC-certified, Geneva Seal qualified, featuring a micro-rotor configuration that was both technically sophisticated and visually stunning. They used a swan-neck regulator, not ETAchron; no compromises, basically! Within months, word spread through Swiss watchmaking circles that Chopard had created something genuinely special - a movement that could stand toe-to-toe with the best from traditional manufactures.
They launched it in the L.U.C 16/1860, which became the foundation piece of their new L.U.C collection. The naming added flair to the story too, because Louis-Ulysses Chopard, the company founder, finally had a worthy “horological tribute.” That watch marked the moment Chopard transformed from an établisseur into a legitimate haute horology manufacture.
The key thing to understand in that story is how deliberately they approached the transition. Rather than rushing out a half-assed movement just to claim “in-house” status, they invested the time and resources to create something that would establish maximum credibility from day one. The 1.96 became the platform that launched Chopard’s serious watchmaking credentials, and these are credentials that continue driving their haute horlogerie efforts today.
Conclusion
Let’s wrap this up before I waffle on for too long… After spending time at La Fabrique du Temps, I gained a better appreciation for how Louis Vuitton is going about getting a seat at the proverbial table in the world of haute horlogerie. I get that most see the effort as LV applying luxury branding to conventional watches, and to a certain extent there’s no getting away from the fact that the LV brand was of course built upon something other than watches. Fine. But the truth is, LFdT is exploring watchmaking territories that many actual watch manufacturers avoid entirely. Take a brand like Cartier for example; they have a long history of making watches, but I’d happily state that as far as actual watchmaking chops are concerned, LFdT sh1ts all over them. Yet, Cartier is considered to be a more “legit” watchmaker by the average person.
I thought about this after my visit… if they’re so good at watchmaking, and can demonstrate & deliver so much watchmaking skill, why will folks not treat them as a serious watch brand? I concluded it was mainly because LV lack the history to underpin all of this. It feels like a fabricated narrative at times; the “big corporation swoops in, buys talent, and demands a seat at the haute horology table” narrative annoys people, because of a misguided belief that such a seat must be earned over time.
People have always been, and will always be, fickle; and I guess there is better way for LV to capture their hearts. I think LV should create a complete “loss-leader” product; one which has literally zero compromises, and holistically showcases all the capabilities which are clearly present in the factory I visited. They need not do a big fancy launch, and waste money on marketing either. They could make maybe 100 pieces, and only sell it to haute horology enthusiasts, but otherwise keep it completely low-key. I believe that if this is done to their highest standards, the product would stand on its own merit, and serious horology enthusiasts would recognise this for themselves. If that were to happen, the product will market itself. After that, they can still make the regular stuff, just like Chopard also makes non-L.U.C. pieces, but people would recognise this is a product/price differentiation issue, not a quality/capability issue. In doing so, a seat at the haute horology table will open up all on its own.
End Note
I was invited to the factory by Jean Arnault and Sylvain van Mulders (who I knew from his time at Greubel Forsey). They did not pay for my trip to Geneva, but they did kindly arrange transport to the factory. Beyond that, they did not ask me to write about any of this, nor did they review this post before I shared it. Everything you see here represents my own thoughts, and any errors or incorrect statements are my own.