Smart watches have carved a fairly consistent niche for themselves in the seven years since Apple launched its groundbreaking timepiece in 2015 and Tag Heuer launched the Swiss watch industry’s first rapid response just seven months later. But while Apple sales are of course huge, they haven’t eclipsed luxury mechanical watches as yet. And Smart watches from certain high-end Swiss brands have crept up alongside them as a viable alternative.
Connected watches are not for everyone. Many of us require our watches only to tell the time and—more importantly—to do it elegantly. If, however, you’re the guy who prefers all the apps, doohickeys, and functionality of this new(ish) technology, but are looking for something elevated, you have some good options. And the luxury brands who have embraced Smart watches the most successfully (TagHeuer, Montblanc, and Louis Vuitton are the most noteworthy names) have one distinct advantage over Apple: If they can digitise it, they have a design heritage to draw on that goes back decades, if not centuries.
Louis Vuitton’s Horizon Light Up watch, which launched this month, is a great example. It’s the latest version of the iconic Tambour mechanical watch that originally launched in 2002 and the third smart iteration, and it comes with some noteworthy innovations but also some seriously high-end Vuitton flair.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon Light Up Connected Watch
Three 44mm cases come in polished steel, matte black, or matte brown finishes with low-profile activation buttons. Each houses a digital display with eight possible dial permutations that play on different design cues drawn from LV’s 170-year-old playbook. You can further select from 11 new gradient displays and even add your own initials on the screen, which for the first time has an always-on setting so you don’t have to shake it or hit a button to show it off in the pub. (Worry not, there are four distinct energy-management settings so you can decide just how much juice you want to use.)
The Tambour Horizon also resorts to some relatively old-school electronics to boost the visual impact of the watch. While the smart module in the centre does all the functional stuff, the striking curved edge of the sapphire glass houses a series of 24 LED lights in the graphic trefoil shapes first introduced on trunks (with Vuitton’s famous LV logo) around 1910. These light up in an animated array of colours whenever a notification comes in. Nifty, right? There’s something joyfully expressive about the Tambour Horizon Light Up that takes you beyond mere functionality to somewhere more entertaining altogether.
The smart watch market has matured to the point that it’s no longer sufficient for luxury watch brands to offer up what amounts to little more than an Apple watch in a case that looks a bit like a mechanical one they already make. Thinking way outside the box and making a point of difference in both the functionality and the display is increasingly key in luxury connected watches. That’s what’s happening here. To play legitimately in the smart watch market, these brands have had to get savvy about both the appearance and the experience. It’s about being smart, yes, but it’s also about being fun.
Nick Sullivan is Creative Director at Esquire, where he served as Fashion Director from 2004 until 2019. Prior to that, he relocated from London with his young family to Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. He has styled and art directed countless fashion and cover stories for both Esquire and Big Black Book (which he helped found in 2006) in exotic,uncomfortable, and occasionally unfeasibly cold locations. He also writes extensively about men’s style, accessories, and watches. He describes his style as elegantly disheveled.
