Introducing – Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune (First Impression)

Hermès might not be the first brand to think of when talking high-end watches or Haute Horlogerie, but in fact, some of their watches are definitely belonging to this category. One of them is the new Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune. Presented to us yesterday at the SIHH, it was by far the most interesting watch of their novelties.

Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune

There are actually two versions of the new Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune watch, one with an aventurine dial and one with a meteorite dial. Each is limited to 100 pieces and have their own unique number. Both watches enable you to see the moon phases demonstrated simultaneously for the northern and the southern hemispheres. This is being achieved by the discs that gravitate on either the meteorite or aventurine dial, showing the moons (made of mother-of-pearl) to the wearer.

Although the images in this article show the same dial positions, we shot some photos ourselves with different positions of the rotating discs.

We obviously love the space and moon theme here on Fratello, so we can’t wait to dig into this watch a bit deeper. A more in-depth article on this Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune watch will be published later on.

Caliber H1837 + Module

Hermès uses their in-house caliber H1837 movement as a base and an exclusive “L’heure de la lune” module for the gravitation of the mobile counters. The movement is self-winding and uses 193 components, and another 117 components are added for the module.  It ticks at 28,800vph and has a diameter of 26mm. The base module measures 3.7mm in thickness and the module adds another 4.2mm. The Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune displays hours, minutes, a date and a double moon phase (display of moon phases seen from the northern and southern hemispheres).

White Gold Case

The case of the Arceau L’heure de la Lune was already designed in 1978 by Henri d’Origny (it is cool that Hermès mentions their designers) and is made of 18-carat white gold. This case has been used for many other watches and still is in the current collection, of course.

Although I love meteorite as a material for dials, the aventurine is very neat as well. Both materials have been used by other brands as well (and for quite a while), but it never disappoints really. If I had to make a choice between these two versions of the Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune, I would probably go for the aventurine. Although the meteorite is perhaps the material when it comes to moon related watches, the aventurine is such a perfect representation of the sky.

The watch comes on a beautiful alligator strap, including a white gold buckle. The Aventurine dial version has a matt abyss blue strap and the watch with meteorite dials comes on a matt graphite grey strap.

Retail price of the Hermès Arceau L’heure de la Lune is €23.000,=.

More information can be found on the official Hermès website.