Louis Vuitton may have just crowned the next hot indie watchmaker.
Swiss brand Hazemann & Monnin took home LV’s Watch Prize for Independent Creatives in Paris yesterday evening, making the second time the famed fashion house has doled out the award. And if the accolade itself wasn’t enough, Hazemann & Monnin also snagged a €150,000 grant and a year-long mentorship with the storied watchmakers at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
Alexandre Hazemann and Victor Monnin founded their workshop in 2024, though the duo has known each other since their days at France’s Edgar Faure high school, where they were part of the prestigious watchmaking program. All the horological know-how they learned there culminated in their first timepiece, aptly known as the School Watch. The model offers up a movement that plays host to both an instantaneous jumping hour and a passing chime. And while the watch shows off their mechanical capabilities as a pair, Hazemann and Monnin imbue their own individual flair in the model’s two different design schemes: a blue-accented, technical-focused iteration for Hazemann, and a stone-dial version for Monnin.
“Winning the second edition of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize represents a profound recognition of what our atelier is—and what we want it to become,” Hazemann and Monnin said in a statement. “From the conception of movements to the decoration of every component, this honor affirms an approach we believe in. It also gives us the means to go further: to strengthen an independent house and transmit new ideas about watchmaking to those who will carry it forward after us.”
Hazemann & Monnin follows in the footsteps of Raúl Pagès, who won the inaugural Watch Prize in 2024 and passed along the trophy to the pair at the award ceremony. The accolade, created to recognize and support independent creatives as they push the boundaries of the watchmaking world, is open to submissions across the globe, with no limits on experience or location. LV itself has no part in selecting the winner; that is instead left up to what the brand calls the Committee of Experts, a group of 65 watch collectors and experts.
After all candidates and their timepieces are judged on five factors (Design, Creativity, Innovation, Craftsmanship, and Technical Complexity), the committee will narrow it down to five finalists. From there, the winner is selected by the Jury, a group of Committee members nominated by their fellow experts. This year, the core five included Carole Forestier-Kasapi, haute horology and movements strategy director at TAG Heuer; Frank Geelen, CEO, executive editor, and publisher of Monochrome Watches; Matthieu Hegi, artistic director of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton; François-Xavier Overstake, founder and editor of Equation du Temps; and Karl Voutilainen, owner and director of Artisan d’Horologerie d’Art Voutilainen. As for the finalists, those included Japan’s Daizoh Makihara; China’s Xinyan Dai; Switzerland’s Bernhard Lederer; and Japan’s Norifumi Seki.
The La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton mentorship, as we mentioned, is the cherry on top of this prize, including a customized program made just for Hazemann & Monnin and access to the manufacture’s specialists that will lend a hand in the indie brand’s development. And with the help of the storied team there, we may be seeing even more marvels from the duo soon enough.