Hermès Perfects the Travel Watch with the Arceau Le Temps Voyageur

The best thing about returning to watch trade shows like Watches and Wonders is seeing something completely unexpected. So far, this year has been good for that with brands making up for two years of no shows with big wows. But none, so far, has quite surprised and impressed us like Hermès. Though their history with watchmaking is deep, ever since the launch of the Slim d’Hermès in 2015, they’ve been regularly on the radar of enthusiasts and collectors. Watches like their Arceau L’Heure De La Lune showed that they have a unique ability to mix a charmingly whimsical sensibility with serious watchmaking skills. For 2022, they’ve created what feels like a spiritual successor to that watch with the Hermès Arceau Le Temps Voyageur, a design as clever as it is intuitive.

World and travel timers are notoriously difficult to read at a glance, with a few exceptions. There’s typically an overload of information spread across various hands and rotating bezels or disks. For the Arceau Le Temps Voyageur, Hermès along with movement developer Chronode, created a system that is as elegant as useful. Though at first glance the dial might appear as complex as other worldtimers with a full world map and timezones represented by cities along a chapter ring, the way it is read, however, is quite straightforward.

At 12 is a discreet aperture that shows the hour at your home time on a 24-hour scale disk. Towards the center is a large secondary dial with an hour and minute hand. This shows your local time, as well as the minutes in general. Here’s the clever part. Along the edge of that dial is a small red arrow pointing to the currently set timezone as per the city it points at. Cross into another timezone on your travels? Just push the button on the side of the case at nine, and that whole secondary jumps over one spot but maintains 12 at the top position, the arrow corrects to the new city position, and the hour hand on the secondary dial jumps as well. Back home? Just jump to the closest city, and read the time normally.

Simple, intuitive, fun, legible, mechanically complex to achieve, yet executed seemingly effortlessly. In my personal opinion, watches like this are what high-end watchmaking should be all about. It’s not flashy, but it is very special. Powering the Arceau Le Temps Voyageur is the Manufacture Hermès H1837 with the exclusive “time-traveling” module for the complication.

In terms of aesthetics, the Arceau Le Temps Voyageur is in keeping with other watches in the Arceau line. The case, originally designed in 1978, features short lugs off of six, and longer looping lugs off at twelve that are inspired by stirrups for a curious asymmetry. The dial is layered and complex with a tremendous sense of depth from the floating dial, yet manages to not be ostentatious. It’s refined, tasteful, and just slightly whimsical, the kind of watch meant for travel, but more of the business than adventure variety.

There are two versions of the Arceau Le Temps Voyageur, one in gray, the other in blue. The black model is 41mm and features a case that mixes platinum lugs with matte black DLC titanium. The blue model is steel and 38mm. Both wore very nicely, the black DLC making the 41mm feel smaller, and the generally small lugs kept the footprint of the watch compact.

The Hermès Arceau Le Temps Voyageur comes in at $28,825 for the black version and $22,550 for the blue. Clearly high luxury timepieces, but this is Hermès after all. Hermès