It may have been Tyler, the Creator (or Mike Nouveau, if you’re in deep) who rekindled the Monterey’s flame, but it’s Jeremy Allen White who’s basking in its glow.
Back in 2023, Tyler rocked a neo-vintage watch Louis Vuitton first debuted in 1988. In addition to a video from Nouveau in which a discerning and clairvoyant stranger turned down a hefty sum for a vintage Monterey. The watch became one of the most-coveted models of 2024 and its resale value shot into the stratosphere. This year, Louis Vuitton smartly reissued the watch, bumping the luxury factor up tenfold. The new version of the watch trades out a ceramic case for one in solid gold. The watch also has a very pretty enamel dial and an in-house caliber from La Fabriques du Temps, the movement producer purchased by LVMH in 2011 and helmed by master watchmakers Enrico Barbasini and Michel Navas. Now, thanks to folks like Jeremy Allen White, the Monterey is positively everywhere again.
Frazer Harrison
The Monterey is a natural fit for a guy like Jeremy Allen White, who’s shown he’s very into the fashionable side of horology. He’s worn Louis Vuitton before, when he attended the US Open in the brand’s handsomely redesigned Tambour. At award shows, he’s opted for pieces like the Bulgari Bulgari or pieces from Tiffany & Co, like a slender cocktail watch or the brand’s funkier Union Square design. All these pieces prioritize beauty over the complications that might garner gasps at a watch get-together. However, the Monterey is the rare watch that capably checks both of those boxes.
But what is the Monterey, exactly? Conceived by Italian industrial designer Gae Aulenti—the brilliant mind behind the transformation of the Gare d’Orsay into the Musée d’Orsay in Paris—the model actually consisted of two separate watches, the LV I and the LV II. Both are complicated‚ oddball pieces, the former featuring world time, GMT, and date displays and the latter featuring time plus an alarm function. They’re notable for other reasons, too: In addition to their functionality, they’re quartz-powered—it was the ‘80s, after all—and they were housed in white or yellow gold cases (LV I) or a green ceramic housing (LV II). The watch’s strange innertube-esque looks is what makes it so cool.
When LV dropped the new Monterey this year, it both simplified and turned up the heat: Measuring 39 mm in 18K yellow gold, it retains the 12 o’clock crown featured on the original pocket watch-inspired model. The new watch ditches the complications and replaces them with a high-end grand feu enamel dial formed by applying layers of vitreous enamel powder and scorching the whole shebang in a kiln at 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. The chemin de fer minute track and the black Arabic numerals help give it the look of an old pocket watch—maybe the type that company scion Louis Vuitton himself might’ve carried back in the 19th century—while bright pops of red and blue inject a sense of modernity. The business of the original dials has been streamlined into a clean, highly contemporary look that exemplifies the LV aesthetic in the LVMH era.