Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx Watch Review
The Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx unites a flying tourbillon with the brand’s unusual take on the chronograph, first seen back in 2015. However, while this model may share similarities with its forebears, it is unequivocally new. Angus Davies begins by talking about Jean-Marie Schaller, CEO and Creative Director of Louis Moinet, before examining the specification of the Maison’s latest release.
Jean-Marie Schaller x Louis Moinet
When I listen to the Beatles track of 1967, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, I momentarily forget about polluted skies or the cost of living. Within a few minutes, I am in a boat on a river, sailing past tangerine trees and staring up at marmalade skies. The song, despite its age, has worn its years well and continues to provide momentary refuge from what seems like a hostile world.
Imagination is often the preserve of the young. It is manifest with pure invention where nobody hinders creativity with undue emphasis on practical considerations. Likewise, no one dampers the mood with energy-sapping negativity.
Image – Jean-Marie Schaller, CEO and Creative Director of Louis Moinet
When I look at a Louis Moinet timepiece, I invariably smile. Don’t misconstrue, the brand makes serious watches, but they are always packed with originality. Fresh ideas take their first breaths in an oxygen-rich environment, brimming with creativity. Eventually, practicalities are considered but not before the dream has taken shape.
Jean-Marie Schaller, CEO and Creative Director of Louis Moinet, is a visionary. Over the years, he has masterminded incredible watches endowed with dials incorporating a variety of materials, including fossilised dinosaur bone, fossilised palm tree, heat-tolerant polymide film (previously used to protect spacecraft) as well as numerous meteorites.
Image – Louis Moinet Cosmopolis
Schaller’s creativity is not restricted to the materials gracing one of his ingenious dial compositions. The Maison has also created watches that emulate the appearance of an oil derrick or ‘pumpjack‘; a modern-day, wrist-worn automaton. Quite simply, there are no limits to Schaller’s blue-sky thinking.
Louis Moinet Memoris (2015)
In 2015, Louis Moinet released the ‘Memoris‘, a watch billed as ‘a chronograph with timekeeping as a complication’. The beauty of the inaugural Memoris was that it relocated numerous wheels, levers and a column-wheel, components usually found to the rear of a watch, and positioned them to the front. Furthermore, the 46 mm timepiece eschewed a conventional dial, revealing the movement’s many thought processes for the delectation of horological voyeurs.
Image – Louis Moinet Memoris (2015)
Louis Moinet Memoris Spirit (2022)
In recent years, tastes have changed with the watch-collecting community seemingly preferring smaller-sized watches. As a result, in 2022, Schaller, together with designer Fabrice Gonet and ‘case-making artisan’ Bertrand Crevoisier, reimagined the Memoris, culminating in the release of the Louis Moinet Memoris Spirit. Dispensing with the bezel found on its antecedent of 2015, the Memoris Spirit is fitted with a box-type sapphire crystal. Moreover, the watch plays host to a movement containing over 300 components, packed into a case measuring a mere 40 mm in diameter, a significant reduction from the 46 mm case of the 2015 release.
Image – Louis Moinet Memoris Spirit (2022)
Despite occupying less wrist space, the Memoris Spirit remained eminently legible and delivered the same quotient of wearer delight, courtesy of the naked movement parts performing on demand.
Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024) – introduction
Recently, the brand from Saint-Blaise, just 6 km from Neuchâtel, unveiled a new creation, the Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx. Give the watch a cursory glance and you could easily mistake it for the Memoris Spirit; however, look again and you will notice significant differences.
Image – Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024)
Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024) – dial
The dial on the Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx features the bi-compax layout seen on the Memoris (2015) and the Memoris Spirit (2022). Likewise, the exposed column-wheel, lever and wheel arrangement is also in evidence. However, cast your eye to 6 o’clock and you will discover a large aperture playing host to a flying tourbillon. Brand devotees will be aware that as well as making several exquisite chronographs in recent years, Louis Moinet has also released a plethora of mouthwatering, highly original watches fitted with Breguet’s famous gravity-defying invention.
Image – Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024)
Unlike a ‘regular’ tourbillon, the flying tourbillon has no upper bridge and is supported purely from below. This architecture affords superior views of the tourbillon cage rotating once every minute, the balance wheel oscillating to and fro and the pallet lever repeatedly kissing the escape wheel.
Practicality has not been sacrificed on the altar of style. The partially openworked, Dauphine-style hour and minute hands lucidly impart meaning. A smidgen of luminescent treatment graces the tips of the hands, aiding readability in restricted light. A minute track, employing double-digit Arabic numerals, sits on the flange adjacent to a chemin de fer that hugs the periphery of the display. The red central chronograph seconds hand features an openworked, circular counterweight, a design that is also employed on the counters, albeit in smaller form.
Each counter plays host to Arabic numerals and a chemin de fer, repeating the aesthetic employed on the flange. This imbues the dial with an agreeable dose of consistency and augments the overall cohesion of the design. The tracks on the counters are applied to sapphire circlets, allowing the wearer to see more of the chronograph mechanism below. The ‘dial’ is actually the mainplate and is presented in a black hue, accentuating each constituent part of the display.
As a self-confessed watch geek, this watch is pure indulgence. The sight of the tourbillon in flight is a mesmerising spectacle. Furthermore, there is something special about seeing the column wheel advance and observing the levers moving whenever the monopusher at 2 o’clock is actuated.
Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024) – case
Allow your eyes to stray and they may well notice that the bezel has made a return appearance. Consistent with the Louis Moinet paradigm, nothing is perfunctory. The bezel is castellated with numerous facets that freely engage with light. The sapphire crystal is curved but does not extend to the edge of the case in the same way it does with the Memoris Spirit.
Image – Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024)
While the lugs fitted to the Memoris Spirit are solid on their upper face, those fitted to the Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx are openworked on top. The sides of the case still share the openworked lug design of the Memoris Spirit but eschew the crown protectors and feature a new, more intricately shaped crown.
Measuring 42.5 mm in diameter, the case features an elaborate construction method. The ‘core’ is formed of Grade 5 titanium and dressed in a black coating. This core is then mounted within a series of ‘case elements’, including the ‘lateral sections’, a rear section and a bezel, all of which are formed of 18-carat red gold. These latter elements are also presented in different executions, namely polished, satin-finished and micro-beaded finishes. Everything is refined to the highest order.
Image – Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024)
To the rear of the watch, an exhibition caseback grants sight of the hand-wound movement.
Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024) – movement
As stated earlier, the watch is fitted with a flying tourbillon. This mechanism counters the adverse influence of gravity on the rate. By placing the escapement and regulating organ within a cage, in this instance rotating 360° every minute, the influence of gravity is negated, thereby augmenting precision. This mechanism is often termed a ‘high complication’. Moreover, Louis Moinet has heightened the degree of complexity by adding a chronograph, a complication that is also very intricate.
Image – Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024)
While the watch has a contemporary appearance, the column-wheel and horizontal clutch are decidedly old school. By opting for this traditional configuration, the wearer can observe the chronograph engaging and disengaging, a spectacle that I am sure will appeal to many horophiles.
Image – Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024)
The movement features a ‘volte-face’ double spring barrel. ‘This means that the two barrels are arranged upside down in series. The barrels release their energy simultaneously, delivering a power reserve of ninety-six hours’. Beyond the movement’s impressive power-reserve, the two barrels working in series will deliver a more linear flow of energy to the escapement, improving rate stability.
Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx (2024) – closing remarks
Like The Beatles of the 1960s, Jean-Marie Schaller’s limitless capacity for invention and design is evidenced with every creation that emerges from his atelier in Saint Blaise. The Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx unites two highly desirable mechanisms and cleverly presents them dial-side. No longer do wearers have to settle for removing their cherished timepiece from their wrist, turning it over to see the magic within. Schaller presents a horological spectacle front of house and, like ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ it is an other-worldly performance.
Image – Jean-Marie Schaller, CEO and Creative Director of Louis Moinet with certificates from Guinness World Records
Further reading
Technical specifications
- Model: Louis Moinet Impulsion Onyx
- Reference: LM-114.40.50
- Case: 18-carat red gold case & Grade 5 titanium, diameter 42.5 mm, water resistance 3 ATM (30 metres), curved sapphire crystal to front, sapphire caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, seconds, chronograph with 60-seconds and minute counter, flying tourbillon
- Movement: hand-wound movement; frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 36 jewels, power reserve 96 hours.
- Strap: alligator leather strap paired with a folding clasp.
- Price on application
- Limited Edition: 28 pieces