The Louis Erard Excellence designed by Alain Silberstein is a fun and funky regulator at a pretty affordable price

The simple joy of watches

If I’m going to be completely honest, the new Louis Erard x Alain Silberstein limited edition collaboration watch caught me completely by surprise. I had heard about the architect and watchmaker Alain Silberstein a few years ago when he did that collaboration with MB&F for the LM1 Silberstein. The way he played with colour and shape on that watch left quite a deep impression on me. And I am extremely excited that we can now all experience the joy of Silberstein’s imagination, at a price point that doesn’t quite break the bank.

Louis Erard is a brand that has been around for 90 years now but it was a little over 10 years ago that they were acquired by new owners and started pushing into the mid-range market with their watches. Their pride and joy since the brand’s relaunch in 2003 is a regulator movement made exclusively for Louis Erard. A regulator movement is one of the purest forms of timekeeping as it breaks down the indication of the hours, minutes and seconds to improve chronometric precision.

One of the main reasons Silberstein, who also owns his brand of watches, by the way, decided to collaborate with Louis Erard is because he had never been able to work with a regulator complication in his 40 years of making watches.

His design starts with the most obvious, the large central minutes hand, reduced to the most basic form of an indicator: an arrow. And the inspiration for this comes from the clocks on buildings which historically told the time with just one hand and also the clocks found in train stations. The rest of the watch is designed based on simple geometric shapes and even the colour scheme takes from the prime colours of yellow, blue and red.

The best part about all of this is, the watch is available at a price of CHF2,800 with the stainless steel case and CHF2,900 for the black PVD case. Both versions are each limited to only 178 units worldwide.

Case: stainless steel
Case size: 40mm
Crystal: Anti-reflective sapphire glass
Lug width: 21mm
Movement: ETA 7001 with Louis Erard in-house complication
Water Resistance: 50m
Price: CHF2,800 to CHF2,900

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