As its first watch, the original 1988 Monterey watch marked the beginning of a new path for Louis Vuitton. The only watch designed by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, it made for a striking choice for Louis Vuitton's watch debut. We saw it resurface in 2025 as a collector's heirloom, limited, pebble-smooth and making eighties Monterey values soar. Today it is back in techy ceramic as a runway charm.
The Louis Vuitton Monterey watch
The lugless gold pebble that Gae Aulenti sketched for the house set the tone for Louis Vuitton's watch language and proves that architectural watch design ages the way a good building does. The 2025 re-edition set the tone, but upscaled in spec from its eighties namesake, in 18-karat yellow gold. The Monterey was sized to 39mm and finished with a white grand feu enamel dial framed by red and blue railroad tracks, faithful to the original down to the crown perched at twelve o'clock rather than three. Aulenti positioned it there deliberately, borrowing the grammar of a pocket watch, and the result has always looked slightly foreign among conventional watches, setting the tone for Louis Vuitton and making it a cult favourite.
Now the Monterey has crossed into fashion. At Pharrell Williams's S/S 2027 men's show in Paris, Louis Vuitton unveiled two ceramic versions of the watch, one in glossy black, one in a bold green. They were presented not on wrists but as charms tied to the runway looks themselves, the latest sign that pocket and fob watches are making a return. The watch can be worn as an accessory, or as seen here, insouciantly dangle from a belt hoop.
The lugless case and the crown-at-twelve silhouette carry over unchanged, so the ceramic Monterey inhabits a quirky pocket watch silhouette, but that pocket-watch inheritance is not incidental. From Daniel Arsham’s teardrop Hublot to plastic Swatch Audemars Piguet collaborations, we see mechanical watches drifting further from the wrist and into the territory of decorative objects worn on chains and clipped to bags. Louis Vuitton, a house built on trunks and travel rather than horology, is unusually well positioned to make that case.
The ceramic editions arrive in stores from 26 September