admin Louis Vuitton’s new short film sounds like a cinephile’s fever dream. Directed by Damian Chazelle and starring Bradley Cooper, the clip is set inside the clock atop Paris’s iconic Musée d’Orsay. (The cherry on top? The accompanying campaign was shot by superstar photographer Mario Sorrenti.) All these A-listers came together to promote the Parisian house’s new streamlined Tambour watch.
The dreamlike short—both Chazelle and Cooper’s second commercial for Louis Vuitton—features the actor in a world where time is everything. One moment he’s standing in front of the museum’s grand mechanical clock; the next he’s heeding the call of an appointment written elegantly on a paper plane; and throughout it all, of course, he frequently checks the time on his shiny new Tambour. It all concludes with a meet-cute set against the backdrop of the clock—which has been there since the early 1900s, when the Musée building still served as a train station.
And while it appears that Cooper is simply checking the time on his watch, it’s just as possible he’s admiring his new piece. LV originally debuted the Tambour in 2002, but the house launched a fully redesigned version of the watch in July. Where the previous Tambour was as thick and bulky—much like the tambourine from which it takes its name—the updated spin on LV’s flagship timepiece is far svelter and more attractive.
Louis Vuitton’s new watch has arrived at the perfect time. Collectors have gone cuckoo for luxury sport watches and the Tambour hits all the right jangly notes, including an integrated metal bracelet reminiscent of the ones seen on other hit models like Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak and Patek Philippe’s Nautilus. The Tambour represents a new vision for Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking division, which Jean Arnault is now stewarding. In 2023, Louis Vuitton is full of fresh starts—and much like tapping Jay-Z to perform at Pharrell’s debut show, enlisting Cooper and Chazelle to make cinematic magic is a big show of faith in the house’s latest timepiece.
