How These Three Fashion Houses Revolutionized Modern Watchmaking

Many famous fashion brands have put their names on the dials of watches over the years, and yet very few of these haute couture houses have really made a major investment in becoming a serious, vertically integrated purveyor of haute horlogerie. Even fewer have attempted to compete at the highest echelons of the watch industry in terms of design, technology, and high-complication innovation. To be clear, we’re not talking here about companies that have become renowned as high-fashion and jewelry brands but were actually watchmakers first — like Cartier, Piaget, and Chopard — but about relative latecomers to the craft of watchmaking that have nevertheless carved out an impressive identity for themselves in the timekeeping trade. Here we take a closer look at what are arguably the Big Three of the category: Bulgari, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton. 

One of Italy’s most renowned jewelers (and one of the wristwatch industry’s boldest innovators) actually has its roots in Greece. Sotirios Voulgaris, the only survivor of 11 children from a family of silversmiths in the Greek town of Paramythia, was born in 1857 and learned the family craft from his father, making jewelry as well as sword sheaths and belt buckles. After Ottoman invaders set fire to the town in 1873, the family moved to the Isle of Corfu, where Voulgaris met the man who’d become his mentor, Macedonian goldsmith Demetrios Kremos. The two artisans decided to start a business in Italy, settling first in Naples, and eventually in Rome, where they opened their first shop in 1884. After just a few months, however, the partnership ended and Voulgaris — who had now changed his name to the more Italianate “Sotirio Bulgari” — opened up his own shop, which found success selling silver jewelry, tableware, and other artisanal items and quickly expanded to seven locations. 

In 1910, Bulgari’s sons Giorgio and Constantino joined the business, which by that point was focused solely on high-end jewelry, and took it to an even higher level of success and prestige on the international stage by catering to the Art Deco tastes of the time. In 1934, two years after Sotirio Bulgari died, the Bulgari brothers established the now-internationally recognized “BVLGARI” trademark, adopting the ancient Roman alphabet for its letters. 

Bulgari took its initial steps into watchmaking in the 1920s, making several jewelry wristwatches for ladies during that era of Art Deco dominance. But the timepiece that truly ushered in the Bulgari style of watchmaking (at least on the feminine side) was the first Serpenti in 1948. Designed around the iconography of a snake, a symbol of fertility and good fortune in ancient Greek and Roman cultures, the Serpenti paid homage to both sides of Bulgari’s history and remains one of the most iconic ladies’ watches, and a pillar of the brand, to this day. Several decades later, in the 1970s, during the infamous Quartz Crisis, Bulgari finally entered the men’s watch arena in a major way. 

The first notable model was the Bulgari Roma, in 1975, which combined a yellow-gold case inspired by a Roman coin with a digital LED time display (powered, of course, by a quartz movement). This limited edition proved popular enough that Bulgari released another men’s watch — this one with an analog design and with a case design even more evocative of ancient Rome — in 1977, the Bulgari Bulgari. Its name was derived from the two Roman-font logos engraved on the watch’s gold bezel, a now-emblematic design attributed to the third-generation CEO Gianni Bulgari, and it opened the door for a wave of other Bulgari men’s watches in the 1980s and ‘90s, including the sport-oriented Diagano and the stylishly avant-garde Aluminium. But what really put Bulgari on the high-horology map was the Octo and its 21st-Century extension, the record-setting Octo Finissimo.

The Octo watch that eventually gave rise to the record-breaking Octo Finissimo was not even, at first, a Bulgari product: it was designed by Gérald Genta (Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, Patek Philippe Nautilus) for his eponymous watch brand, which was eventually absorbed by Bulgari. The jeweler-watchmaker reintroduced the model, now called the Octo L’Originale, in 2012, kicking off a new family and ushering in one of the first Bulgari manufacture movements, Caliber BVL 193. Two years later came the first Octo Finissimo (italian for “superfine”), which was a game-changer for both Bulgari as a watchmaker and the timepiece industry as a whole. It was the first of several models that established new records for thinness in both watches and movements. 

The world’s thinnest tourbillon (just 5mm thick) debuted in that seminal year, followed by the world’s thinnest minute repeater (6.85mm thick) two years later. Subsequent years would bring even more records, including the world’s thinnest self-winding watch and thinnest self-winding tourbillon watch in 2018, the thinnest chronograph with GMT in 2019, and the thinnest perpetual calendar in 2021. As the Octo Finissimo continues into its second decade on the market, Bulgari continues to push the boundaries of thinness, with the recently released Ultra editions coming in at 2mm thick or even less. You can delve more deeply into the Octo Finissimo collection and its many milestones in this article. 

While the Octo Finissimo series clearly garners much of the interest and critical acclaim for Bulgari as a watchmaker in the 21st Century, the brand continues to innovate in other areas, and other collections, as well. In 2020, Bulgari revived the Aluminium, the first wristwatch with an aluminum case and rubber strap, and introduced a GMT version a year later. The 40-mm aluminum case of the Aluminium GMT features a blue rubber bezel engraved with the double “BVLGARI” in Roman-style letters; inside its border, surrounding the blue dial is a two-tone 24-hour scale in red and blue; a central red-tipped GMT hand adjusts the time in the wearer’s home city or any other chosen time zone. The self-winding movement on display behind the titanium caseback stores a power reserve of 42 hours. Along with the mostly male-targeted Aluminium models, of course, Bulgari offers an array of popular feminine timepieces like the Serpenti, many of them in high-jewelry executions, amply proving that Bulgari still has its feet firmly planted in both the watch and jewelry worlds. 

In 1837, a French harness-maker named Thierry Hermès opened his own workshop on rue Basse-du-Rampart in Paris, near the Church de la Madeleine. The shop catered to the needs of the city’s equestrians by making high-quality saddles, harnesses, and other horse riding accessories. Hermès’ equestrian equipment won him a medal at the 1867 Exposition Universale, and a prestigious clientele that included Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Thierry’s son Charles-Émile took over in 1880, moving the company to its current, iconic location on the fashionable Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. His sons joined the business shortly thereafter, expanding the repertoire into blankets, silk goods, and an increasing array of leather goods, which remain the firm’s specialty today. Around the time of World War I, with inventions like the automobile and the airplane contributing to a boom in transportation, third-generation proprietor Emile-Maurice Hermès responded by turning the company’s leather expertise toward products like luggage and ladies’ handbags. 

Over the years, the company diversified even further into the high-fashion segments of the international market, developing its own perfumes and ladies’ haute couture clothing in the 1920s and ‘30s. It was also during this period that Hermès made its first forays into the world of timepieces. The first Hermès-signed timepiece was the Ermeto travel clock(below), produced in 1928 in a collaboration with Movado and sold at the flagship Hermès store in Paris. Other watches from other partnerships followed, as Hermès collaborated with established houses like Jaeger-LeCoultre and Universal Genève. This arrangement would be the norm until 1978, when Hermes finally established its own watchmaking arm, Le Montre Hermès, under the leadership of Jean-Louis Dumas, a descendant of Thierry Hermès who managed the company until 2006.

The same year that the luxury leather-goods giant opened Le Montre Hermès, it released its first signature timepiece, the original Arceau. Designed by Henri d’Origny, who would become a major creative force at Hermès across five decades, the Arceau was on-theme for the maison’s heritage, with a round case attached to a leather strap by asymmetrical lugs inspired by the stirrups on a saddle. The first Cape Cod watch arrived in 1991, with a “square-in-a-rectangle” case and elongated lugs in the style of Hermes’ “Chaine d’Anchre” jewelry, which is inspired by a nautical anchor chain. The Cape Cod style, with its long, wraparound leather strap, remains a presence in the collection today. The company’s famous “H” logo inspired the unusual case shape of the Heure H models that debuted in 1996. 

Hermès’ biggest step toward becoming a true luxury watchmaker, rather than a style-and-fashion house that dabbled in watches, came in 2006, when the company purchased a 25 percent stake in Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier, a prestigious Swiss producer of high-end movements for haut-de-gamme watch brands including Parmigiani Fleurier and Richard Mille. This partnership, coupled with subsequent moves by Hermès, including acquiring its own dial maker in 2012 and its own casemaker in 2013, and the opening of its own dedicated watch factory in 2017, opened the door to more vertical integration by the French company's watchmaking division than ever before. (And of course, Hermès watches would always sport some of the industry’s most exquisitely crafted leather straps, courtesy of the parent company’s dedicated atelier in Switzerland.) 

The watches that emerged from Le Montres Hermès speak to style mavens and horology enthusiasts alike. Perhaps the brand’s most distinctive contribution to 21st century watchmaking is Le Temps Suspendu, introduced in 2011 in the hallmark Arceau case and equipped with a movement developed in a collaboration with high-complication specialist Jean-Marc Wiederrecht at Aghenor. The watch essentially “freezes time,” with a specially developed retrograde mechanism that keeps the hands stationary at 12 o’clock while the movement continues to run; in this “casual” timekeeping concept, the current time is hidden until the wearer summons it on demand, rather than displayed constantly. The original Arceau Le Temps Suspendu won the Best Men’s Watch Prize at the 2011 GPHG and Hermès has kept the unique complication in its collection since, rolling out a Le Temps Suspendu version of its sporty, everyday “Cut” series in 2025. 

The Slim d’Hermès family debuted in 2015, ushering in the first generation of Hermes proprietary (“in-house,” if you’re considering Vaucher as part of the Hermès brand) movements. The core model is an ultra-thin dress watch, with its own elegantly designed numeral font, containing the exquisitely finished self-winding H1950 caliber, which quickly found a receptive audience. Hermès has added complicated models to the series, perhaps the most horologically impressive being the Slim d’Hermès Quantième Perpétuel, a perpetual calendar powered by the H1950 and an added, specially developed module, courtesy of Aghenor. Its harmoniously arranged dial has a four-year display, encompassing months and leap years, at 9 o’clock; subdials for a dual-time/GMT function and date, at 6 o’clock and 12 o’clock, respectively; and a moon-phase display, with a white mother-of-pearl moon disk against an aventurine sky, at 3 o’clock. Despite its complexity, the high-complication watch does justice to the understated thinness of the Slim d’Hermes collection: the movement is just 4 mm thick, nestling perfectly into the 39mm case’s own 8.14mm-thick profile.

Le Montre Hermès has also introduced its own breathtaking and technically innovative take on the classic moon-phase complication. The Arceau L’Heure de Lune, which houses the proprietary Caliber H1837, positions two satellite subdials, for the time and analog date, over two mother-of-pearl moon disks — one each for the Northern and Southern hemispheres — surrounded by the “sky” of the meteorite dial. The subdials rotate clockwise around the dial, covering and uncovering both moons as they go, every 59 days for an astronomically accurate view of the moon in the north and south. The presence of meteorite in these limited-edition models elevates the experience to something truly cosmic in scope. Not bad for a saddlemaker turned handbag guru. 

Most luxury manufacturers have practical origins and such was the case with Louis Vuitton, founded by its eponym in 1854 in Paris. Vuitton, who’d been the personal trunk maker and travel-packer for Empress Eugenie of France, wife of Napoleon III, discovered that the rounded-top trunks that were most popular for travel in that era were impractical because their shape wouldn’t allow them to be stacked on top of each other for ocean voyages. His solution, the Trianon, a rectangular trunk made from durable yet lightweight materials, revolutionized that business and spawned dozens of imitators. Vuitton also made the first pick-proof lock for luggage. Louis’ son George Vuitton, who took over after his father’s death in 1892, oversaw the company’s international growth and created the now-iconic LV emblem in tribute to the founder. Louis Vuitton became a brand known and beloved all over the world, branching out into handbags, jewelry, perfumes, shoes, and a variety of ready-to-wear items and small leather goods. Timepieces, for many years, were not part of the maison’s repertoire, other than some branded travel clocks it produced in the 1920s and ‘30s.

As an organization, the case could be made that Louis Vuitton started on its path to watchmaking in 1987, when the luggage giant merged with the prestigious champagne-and-spirits house Moët Hennesy to form LVMH — the powerful luxury conglomerate that would add heritage watch manufacturers TAG Heuer and Zenith to its stable of brands in 1999. (Hublot would join the fold later, in 2008.) However, the first Louis Vuitton signed watches didn’t appear until a few years later, in 2002. The inaugural model was called the Tambour, and it appropriately embodied Louis Vuitton’s travel-oriented theme with its GMT-equipped automatic movement. It was also a landmark in case design: the name “Tambour” referenced the watch’s 39mm, bezel-less, drum-shaped case, inspired by the Japanese taiko drum. The case’s lugs were engineered to look like the handles of a Louis Vuitton travel trunk, and the 12 letters in the brand name (a bit of serendipity) were engraved in the side of the case to align with the dial’s 12 hour markers. Louis Vuitton has continued to add complications and other variants to the Tambour, ensuring it remains a cornerstone of the collection.

Louis Vuitton stepped up its vertical integration on the watchmaking front at the tail end of the 2000s, establishing a dedicated workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 2008 that assembled watches and worked on customizing base movements sourced from ETA as well as those from companies within LVMH, such as Zenith’s El Primero. One year later, that workshop produced one of the Louis Vuitton watch brand’s most important and emblematic inventions, the first Spin Time watch. Outfitted with a proprietary caliber, the Spin Time’s dynamic, nontraditional time display, with hour numerals on spinning cubes, was another nod to Louis Vuitton’s historic travel theme, inspired by the flipping times and places on airport arrivals/departures boards. The Spin Time function has become an exclusive signature of Louis Vuitton watches, most recently on display in 2025’s Tambour Taiko Spin Time editions, which all feature the familiar drum-shaped Tambour case (39.5mm in white gold) and contain the automatic LFT ST13.01 movement, powering the dial’s outer ring of spinning hours and the accompanying inner analog minutes display. 

Louis Vuitton’s emergence onto the scene of serious watchmaking maisons was firmly cemented in 2010 with its acquisition of La Fabrique du Temps. All of the company’s horological disciplines, previously spread out across several Swiss ateliers, were now united under one roof, and it allowed Louis Vuitton to make new strides in high horology, like its first in-house chronograph movement, which debuted in the Tambour Twin Chrono in 2013, and its first complicated movements to earn the prestigious Poincon de Geneve, including the Voyager Flying Tourbillon in 2016 and the Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon in 2017. 

Perhaps the ultimate expression thus far of all the in-house disciplines now claimed by Louis Vuitton, in its relatively brief tenure as a watchmaker, arrived in 2025. The Louis Vuitton Tambour Convergence is designed to “converge” three sets of horological savoir-faire — movement design, casemaking, and hand craftsmanship — into a single timepiece with a distinctive non-analog display. The watch’s 37mm case, in either platinum or rose gold, offers a harmonious combination of hand-polished upper surfaces, satin-finished sides, and micro-sandblasted lateral surfaces, while its exhibition back showcases the movement, automatic Caliber LFT MA01.01.

The movement powers a “dragging hour” display that peeks out from the nearly opaque dial through two arched guichets near the top. Rotating behind these small openings are two clockwise-rotating disks, one for hours, the other for minutes; a diamond-shaped pointer between the two disks indicates the correct time. The calligraphy of the disks’ Arabic numerals even reflects the styles used on turn-of-the-20th-century timepieces, and the exquisite finishing of the cases extends to the movement, whose solid-gold V-shaped rotor, sandblasted bridges and arched barrel click contribute to a 45-hour power reserve and a high level of chronometric accuracy. For a brand devoted to the theme of travel and adventure, it is yet another important step on the long journey to watchmaking immortality.