Feature: Louis Erard: Worth It Or Not?

Perhaps recently you’ve heard a bit about the entry level-ish brand Louis Erard, which claims to make high quality watches at reasonable prices so that people who admire Breguets and F.P. Journes but can’t afford them still get to have a bit of fun. I can’t resist a good, old bargain, so I took a look for myself.

Louis Erard Le Régulateur Louis Erard x Massena LAB Gold

In particular I’m focussing on three watches from the Excellence collection, which aims to provide a cut-price flavour of what the kind of people who forget where they’ve parked their yacht get to experience. But before we get too far into that, let me introduce Louis Erard to you.

The name sounds suspiciously shopping channel, but the earliest use of the name was back in 1929. The initial assessment is fair enough really, as the name was dug up for reuse in 2004 for a number of different entry-level pieces, including a mix of quartz. Kind of a nothing brand, really.

Faltering performance demonstrated that if Louis Erard were to be successful, it’s scattergun approach to affordable timepieces needed to be more considered. The goal was always to bring good quality watchmaking to the masses, but that in itself is a rather bland and unexciting notion.

So, it was refined. Everything quartz was ditched. They decided to slot into a very specific window between around $2-4,000 and aim to put everything they could from that spend into crafting a watch that—from the outside at least—was indistinguishable from watches many times more expensive.

Forget your bland, unimaginative bargain watches, your generic, rack ‘em and stack ‘em, airport duty free catalogue crappers—the real cherry on the Louis Errard cake was going to be the design. These were going to be watches that didn’t just excite the penny pinchers: they were after the big fish too. If they could make their watches desirable to anyone no matter the weight of their wallet, they would have succeeded.

Lovely idea, but I’m sure executing it isn’t so easy. Let’s put it to the test with the Le Régulateur Louis Erard x Massena LAB. Oh hello! Massena LAB? These guys are like the Pininfarina of watches. Get them on board and it’s not only going to result in a stunning watch, but good vibes, too. They don’t just work with any old Joe slapping watches together.

We’re talking partnerships with MB&F, Habring, Ming—and also, as it happens, Louis Erard, and the result is rather appealing. Within the 42mm stainless-steel case resides a regulator movement, so-called because of its use in regulating and setting other watches, the individual elements clearly separated to avoid confusion.

In gold here or in silver, you get a finely grained backdrop set against a mix of different brushed and blasted elements. The blued steel hands, nicely capped for the hours and minutes, are elegantly sculpted. It’s a $4,000 watch, but the stuff hitting you up front feels much more premium than that. So, what’s the catch?

Louis Erard Le Régulateur Blanc Louis Erard x Alain Silberstein

As they say, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and Louis Erard is putting that theory well into practice with the Le Régulateur Blanc Louis Erard x Alain Silberstein edition. You’re probably noticing a regulator theme here, and it is entirely intentional. I think Louis Erard refers to the regulator as the definition of its core identity and I don’t really know why. It may well be because it looks cool, and if that’s the case, I’m more than okay with that.

So, we’re back at it with the partnerships, this time with Alain Silberstein, noted designer and enthusiast of the 90s children’s TV aesthetic. If you were to describe an Alain Silberstein watch to someone, they’d sooner cut their ears off than listen to anything beyond, “So it’s got primary red, primary blue and primary yellow…” Yet somehow, when you actually see it, it really works. The wacky hands shapes, all wiggly in one place and all triangly in another, the nursery school colour palette, the stark white background.

Even the 40mm case, in polished steel and brushed titanium, sounds like the biggest try-hard design since the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold—but in reality, it breathes a uniqueness that’s actually very compelling. Even the Velcro-ish strap on the hinged titanium bars gives me flashbacks to shoes with flashing lights in the heels—but it just somehow all comes together. I guess that’s why Alain Silberstein is the noted designer and I’m not.

I was way more taken with this watch than I cared to expect. It’s comfortable, it’s beautifully put together, and most of all, it stands out. It’s not another dive watch. I love dive watches, but we’ve got a few of those already. This doesn’t so much dare to be different, because it’s a watch and not a covert special ops mission—but it does threaten you with the thought of actually enjoying yourself. Forget investment, it says, and just smile for a minute instead.

I mean, the irony here is that the limited run nature of these Louis Erard pieces has turned the Alain Silberstein into a bit of an investment piece from its original $4,200 price, but then I guess you can’t win them all. I just hope the people listing them for crazy money at least gave themselves the opportunity to enjoy it for a bit first.

But that catch! The catch. What is the catch? Well, the catch is that if you spend all the money in the front, it doesn’t leave you so much for the back. Louis Erard did the sensible thing and left enough for a reasonable Swiss Sellita, but don’t expect anything more than the bare minimum here. You can forget decoration beyond a quick tidy-up, and to be honest, I’m more than okay with that too.

The little porthole in the back may make the movement look smaller than a gnat’s to-do list, but it gets the job done, and massively commits to the idea of putting the pennies in the front where they can, after all, be more frequently appreciated. Given all the hoo-ha about in-house, I admire this opposing commitment to do something different, but equally valuable.

Louis Erard Guilloché Main II

As if to prove that life doesn’t begin and end with regulator watches designed in partnership with a known watch designer, there’s also the Guilloché Main II. It’s called that because, one, it’s got a dial emblazoned with guilloché and two, it’s the second one they’ve done. I don’t know what the Main bit means. Perhaps you can tell me.

So, there’s no outsourcing of design this time, but Louis Erard is kind enough to let you know who did the dial work that is the centrepiece of this watch, a little business that goes by the name FEHR. F-E-H-R. It’s one of those business where if you found out who they made dials for, they’d be in trouble, so it’s quite nice and neighbourly for Louis Erard to dish out the credit where it’s due.

Why all the fuss about this dial? Because it’s guilloche! What does that mean? I was just about to tell you! Most often, dials with any kind of texture are formed with stamping, which although affordable and effective, ultimately gives a softer, more rounded finish. Imagine smashing an embossed shape into a piece of brass and hoping it comes out crisp. The reality is it doesn’t.

If you want sharp detail in metal, you need less squashing and more cutting. A bit like the engraving in an A. Lange & Söhne balance cock, you want a sharp tool cutting crisp, clean grooves to make them really pop. For concentricity on a rounded dial, you need a rose engine. These machines are older than much of the industry itself and operated entirely manually.

There’s a big plate that lays out the pattern, kind of like a Spirograph for adults. Sounds easy, but everything else is down to the operator. The speed and pressure, both entirely controlled by hand, will determine the depth and sharpness of each cut, with very little room for error. Only the oldest and best craftspeople don’t need a little bin right next to them for all their failed attempts.

This is the second design done via guilloche for Louis Errard, and not only is it an exquisite thing to look at and appreciate, it also avoids some of the outdated banality this technique can bring that puts people off it in the first place. Administered entirely traditionally, it can be a little bit grandpa. This is Louis Erard’s campaign against cliché guilloche.

There’s just 99 of these, even less than the 178 of each of the other two, and it costs just a bit of $4,000. It’s a genuinely good piece, however, and the thinking behind it feels sound—not just because it attempts to bring value to the price point, but intriguing design as well.

It’s all a matter of taste whether you like the designs or not, but it says a lot to me that one watchmaker that I’ve barely even heard of can knock it out the park so well not once, not twice, but three times. There’s a whole wealth of imagination being left very much untapped by much of the rest of the industry, and that means Louis Erard is free to mine from that rich vein undisturbed. They aren’t the cheapest watches at all, but the balance of quality, originality and price is clearly working for them, along with the limited run nature of each design. Rather than wish there were more of the ones I’ve missed, I look forward to seeing what the next ones will be.