Louis Vuitton Unveils Collaboration With Watchmaker Kari Voutilainen
PARIS — For its second collaboration with independent watchmakers, Louis Vuitton has unveiled Thursday a travel-inspired timepiece with Finnish-born, Switzerland-based Kari Voutilainen.
'Kari Voutilainen stands as one of the most prolific watchmakers of his era, and notably one of the pioneers of independent watchmaking,' said Jean Arnault, Louis Vuitton's director of watches. 'It is my hope that this timepiece will be recognized as a celebration of independent watchmaking that will make it possible to support the movement in the years to come.'
More from WWD
Shein, Chanel, Hermès Buck Apparel Market Slowdown
Adriana Lima Stars in the Stephen Sprouse x Marc Jacobs Tote Bag Reissue Campaign With Fresh Pink Colorway
NYX Professional Makeup Partners With 'A Minecraft Movie' for New Collection of Game-inspired Beauty Essentials
Dubbed the LVKV-02 GMR 6, the watch is available in a limited run of five pieces, priced at 550,000 euros each. It is part of a five-year run of collaborations between the French brand and independent watchmaking labels.
As with the model cosigned with Atelier Akrivia, proceeds of this watch's sale are earmarked to fund the biennial Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives launched in 2023 and now on its second edition.
Trained at the renowned Kelloseppakoulu watchmaking school in Finland, the master watchmaker moved to Switzerland in 1989, where he completed the WOSTEP complicated watch course at the International Watchmaking School.
Spotted by Parmigiani Mesure et Art du Temps, he spent almost a decade restoring rare pieces and creating one-offs designs before a three-year stint teaching at the WOSTEP School of Watchmaking.
In 2002, Voutilainen opened his eponymous workshop in Saint-Sulpice, Switzerland, the same year Louis Vuitton launched its inaugural Tambour watch.
Over the years his work has since garnered a number of awards, including 11 gongs at the Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève, considered the Oscars of the watchmaking world.
Voutilainen also serves as a member of the expert committee of the prize.
Calling the endeavor 'a genuine collaboration that is remarkably coherent for both houses,' the master watchmaker said the timepiece 'embodies the identity of Louis Vuitton while also capturing the spirit of our workshop.'
Based on Louis Vuitton's redesigned Escale launched in 2024, it features a case made of tantalum, a metal that is complex to utilize due to characteristics that include gold-like density and a high melting point, while the bezel, back, lugs, crown and strap buckle are made of platinum.
Epitomizing the collaboration between the two watchmakers is the dial, which features the portemanteau 'LVoutilainen' moniker blending their names.
Under gold Roman numerals is a striking multicolored hour circle that was hand-decorated by Maryna Bossy, a skilled artisan in the Métiers d'Art workshop of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. It required 28 different colors, 32 hours of painting and a total of eight hours of firing.
Also taking pride of place on the center of the dial is the hand guilloché engraving by Voutilainen's workshop, in an intricate pattern nodding to the French house's Damier motif. They're also behind the sun and moon used on the day-and-night indicator, delicately engraved and then enameled, where stars turn out to be minute Monogram flowers.
The case back is engraved with 'Louis cruises with Kari' while its sapphire gives a peek of the watch's manual self-winding movement based on Voutilainen's GMR 6 caliber. In a nod to Vuitton's travel heritage, it is a GMT complication with a day-night indicator and a power reserve indicator. The second timezone is indicated at 6 o'clock.
A major feature of this movement is its innovative construction with two escapement wheels, which improves efficiency and gives it increased longevity, stability and a longer power reserve. It also has a unique balance-spring system, pairing a typical Philipps overcoil with the little-known Grossmann curve.
Each watch comes in a bespoke Louis Vuitton travel trunk, bearing a hand-painted rendition of the dial and edition number on the front as well as the signatures of Voutilainen and Arnault inside.
Best of WWD
Watch Industry Tastemakers on Their Top 10 Timepieces and What Makes a Collectible
Zenith Releases Two Timepieces
Blancpain Expands Air Command Range
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Teofimo Lopez Abandons Devin Haney Fight, Leaving Fans With Questions
Teofimo Lopez Abandons Devin Haney Fight, Leaving Fans With Questions originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Devin Haney was looking forward to clashing with Teofimo in August, but despite him signing his part of the deal, Lopez has had a sudden change of mind. Advertisement A few days ago, when Teofimo Lopez fell out with Turki Alalshikh, a Saudi Arabian-based boxing promoter, he took to his social media page to announce that he was fired and that he was looking for a new job. Hours later, he apologized to Turki and showed regret about his actions. 'To His Excellency Turki Alalshikh, I take full responsibility for my inappropriate words on the X app; I publicly apologize to HE; I will conduct myself with greater respect, humility, and professionalism. Sending love and light to all,' said Lopez on X. Hours ago, a bout for Lopez and Haney was confirmed and scheduled for August 16 in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, Lopez has had a change of heart. 'Dear John, Haney's! This is to gently advise you that Teofimo Lopez has withdrawn from the fight, as we'd like to thank you for your efforts and professionalism throughout the process,' said Bill Haney on an X repost. Devin went further and clarified that he was the one who had signed his part; Lopez's was still pending. 'The fight with Teo is not signed! I signed my part, and Teo has been stalling. As of today, he has decided he doesn't want to fight me; he's officially the biggest duck with a thumbs down emoji,' said Devin on X. Lopez hasn't given an explanation why he doesn't want to fight Haney. 'I'm looking to work with a company in the retail industry to launch and expand my 'make boxing great again' brand and other ideas I am working on. Tag a retail company you'd like to see in collaboration and wear as your own,' said Lopez on X. This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 8, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, maker of The Sorrow and the Pity, which examined French collaboration with the Nazis
Marcel Ophuls, who has died aged 97, was a German-born documentary-maker who fled his homeland in the 1930s and spent much of his career interrogating the various legacies of the Second World War; his international breakthrough, the landmark The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié, 1969), revealed the extent to which his adopted France had collaborated with the Nazis. The son of the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls – known for such elaborate melodramas as La Ronde (1950) – Marcel began his career in film drama but achieved greater traction with complex, rigorous, meticulously edited non-fiction work. In documentaries such as The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus (1988), the filmmaker set multiple testimonies side by side, sometimes corroborating, often contradicting, always inviting the spectator to shake any passivity and judge for themselves. In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls spent four and a half hours of screen time – and many more hours of shooting – staking out the city of Clermont-Ferrand 'to analyse four years of collective destiny'. Patiently hearing from residents of all walks of life, the film picked insistently away at the Gaullist myth of a country united against an occupier, instead revealing two Frances at odds with one another – one resisting, the other collaborating. In France, Sorrow was denounced by conservative politicians as 'a prosecutorial film' and initially rejected for both theatrical and television distribution. After much legal wrangling, it finally opened in 1971, earning an Oscar nomination the following year, but it did not air on French television until 1981; a station director said the film had 'destroyed myths the French people still needed'. Ophuls subsequently made films on Vietnam (The Harvest of My Lai, 1970) and the Irish Troubles (A Sense of Loss, 1972), though the latter was rejected by the BBC. His personal favourite, The Memory of Justice, revisited the Nuremberg trials in the context of more recent conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, though the project was again beset by lengthy and expensive legal challenges; Ophuls filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter and spent a decade on the lecture circuit. He made a triumphant return, however, with the Oscar-winning Hôtel Terminus, on the life of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. As free-roaming as its subject, unearthing material both disturbing and absurd, the film ends in one of documentary cinema's most extraordinary sequences, as Ophuls witnesses a chance encounter between a woman who as a child had seen her father carted away by the Gestapo and an elderly neighbour who had turned a blind eye to the same events. Though Hôtel Terminus sparked violent arguments at Cannes, the critic Roger Ebert admired its tenacity, calling it 'the film of a man who continues the conversation after others would like to move on to more polite subjects'. Yet as a characteristically combative Ophuls countered in 2004: 'I'm not obsessed. I just happen to think that the Holocaust was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Think I'm wrong?' He was born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt on November 1 1927, the son of Max Oppenheimer and his actress wife Hildegard Wall. The family fled Germany for France in 1933, taking French citizenship in 1938, whereupon Max dropped the umlaut from his stage name, Ophüls; after the occupation they fled anew to Los Angeles, where Max began an unhappy spell as a studio filmmaker and Marcel attended Hollywood High and Occidental College. Marcel Ophuls completed military service in Japan before studying at UC Berkeley, taking US citizenship in 1950. Upon graduation he moved to Paris, briefly studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, before dropping out and working as an assistant director (initially under the pseudonym Marcel Wall, to dodge nepotism accusations) on John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and his father's sweeping Lola Montès (1955). He made his directorial debut with a German television adaptation of John Mortimer's The Dock Brief (Das Pflichtmandat, 1958), before being tapped by François Truffaut to contribute to the portmanteau film Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962). By now he was part of the New Wave set: Jeanne Moreau funded his detective comedy Banana Skin (Peau de Banane, 1963), but his fiction career came to a halt after the flop thriller Place Your Bets, Ladies (Faites vos jeux, mesdames, 1965). Ophuls moved into documentary, taking a job with the French broadcaster ORTF, where he railed against the prevailing state censorship; he was eventually fired in May 1968 after making a film deemed sympathetic to the student rioters, though by then he was well into post-production on The Sorrow and the Pity. After Hôtel Terminus, Ophuls suffered mixed fortunes. November Days (1990), on the subject of German reunification, played as part of the BBC's Inside Story strand, but The Troubles We've Seen (Veillées d'armes, 1994), on wartime journalism and the Bosnian conflict, failed to reach an audience, despite a César nomination in France. He worked more sparingly in the new millennium, completing Max par Marcel (2009), on his father's legacy, and the career overview Ain't Misbehavin' (Un voyageur, 2013), his final completed film; a later project on anti-Semitism and the Middle East, Des vérités désagréables (Unpleasant Truths), ran into financial and legal troubles and remained unfinished at the time of his death. During a visit to Israel in 2007, Ophuls attempted to define his life's work: 'I'm not a preacher, a judge or an adviser. I'm just a filmmaker trying now and then to make sense of crises... Life made me, unwillingly, an expert on 20th-century crises. I would've preferred to direct musicals.' He is survived by his wife Regine, née Ackermann, and three daughters. Marcel Ophuls, born November 1 1927, died May 24 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hypebeast
4 hours ago
- Hypebeast
The Trilogy Tapes Returns With More Abstract Summer Statements
London-based labelThe Trilogy Tapesis heralded for its avant-garde graphic streetwear statements, and for Summer 2025, the brand is leaning into its cult's favorites with a suite of abstract sweaters, tops, trousers, and more. Key pieces in the collection include the Overdye Crew in 'Grey/Blue,' which boasts an aqua glow around the perimeter of its oversized silhouette, and the TTT Cross Head T-shirt, which dons enlarged iterations of the brand's artistic emblems in black and red hues. Elsewhere, glow-in-the-dark shirts appear next to tops with all sorts of geometric patterns, and a series of shorts feature the same Cross Head design all over the body. Accessories include packable ripstop couriers, heart-shaped logo totes, TTT bucket hats, six-panel trail caps, 'Pain' trucker hats, 'Come Down' socks, and more logomanic items. Notably, the line arrives alongside a kaleidoscopic video campaign directed by Studio Info, which you can watch on Instagram below. The Trilogy Tapes' Summer 2025 collection is now available to shop on the label's brand newwebsiteand at Palace brick-and-mortar locations, with prices ranging from £17 GBP to £166 GBP. Take a look at the lineup in the gallery above.
