The Monterey began life in 1988 as the LV I and LV II, two watches designed by Gae Aulenti, the Italian architect and designer best known for transforming Paris’s Gare d’Orsay into the Musée d’Orsay, as well as her sharp, modernist furniture and interiors that helped define postwar Italian design. “It’s not possible to define a style in my work,” Aulenti told The New York Times in 1987 — a quote that lands especially well here. For Vuitton’s first foray into watchmaking, Aulenti designed the watches, and IWC manufactured them under the leadership of Günter Blümlein.
The result was a duo of quartz models: the LV I, a 40mm world timer with moon phase, date, and alarm in yellow gold limited to 100 pieces, and the LV II, a 37mm ceramic alarm watch produced in a run of 4,000. An extremely limited run of white gold LV Is was produced, as seen in a 2023 “NWA” Instagram post from Jean Arnault. These were ambitious but imperfect. Both models were plagued by production delays and technical hiccups, and their price points — high for the era — made them a tough sell. At the time, the Monterey was expensive, confusing, and probably a little ahead of its audience. Seen now, though, its pebble shape, 12 o’clock crown, and early material experimentation read less like a misstep and more like a rare, eccentric detour that eventually aged into cult status.
Malaika Crawford
2025-10-06 07:00:00