Louis Erard’s All New Régulateur Gravé Noir
Louis Erard, in a move that I think many who follow the brand will view as somewhat surprising, announced a new watch last week along with the news that their longstanding Excellence collection, which has been the home to many of the collaborative limited editions that have propelled the brand to a new level of notoriety over the past several years, is being replaced. Those watches now fall under a new banner, the Noirmont collection. This collection, in turn, is split up into three distinct subgroups, including the standalone “Noirmont,” “Noirmont X,” which would appear to be where you’ll find Louis Erard’s collaborations going forward, and “Noirmont Métiers d’Art.” This final line is where the brand’s latest release sits, the Régulateur Gravé Noir, which sees Louis Erard applying some traditional finishing techniques and vintage inspiration to a watch that has become a signature for them. To give you a sense of the other watches in the Noirmont Métiers d’Art collection, this is where you’ll find the recent Petite Seconde guilloche pieces, as well as their newer regulator with an enamel dial. The new Régulateur Gravé Noir (we’ll just call it the Gravé from here on out) is, as Louis Erard puts it, a new spin on the classic sector dial. The regulator format, it would seem, would be a natural choice to experiment with the sector layout, and in fact you could argue that just about any execution of a regulator is going to have some sector dial ...