Luis Torres in Memoriam

Born in 1938 in the city of Santiago de Chile, Luis started learning about watchmaking when he was a little boy. His father, who did watch repairs as a hobby, taught him and got him interested in watchmaking. His father would send him out to the local watch parts’ supply house, to buy the parts needed for his repairs, when he was around 12 years old.

 

 

 

 

When he was about 20 years old, his father died. Luis inherited all of his father’s tools, and he started working on watches as a hobby, while he was still working at his regular day time job at the Civil Registry.


He started gaining a good reputation as a watchmaker, thus getting more and more private clients, until he finally left his job and started a career as a technician in a shop with Hugo Sanchez, a master watchmaker who taught him a lot.

After some time, Luis was able to open his own small shop around 1974; where he worked on all types of mechanical watches, pocket watches, small and big clocks, and later on the new watches with quartz movements. He had his shop until 1997 when the business started slowing down due to new very cheap watches coming into the market in Chile.

That’s when he decided to move to the U.S. and started working at a Mission Viejo, CA shop for about 5 years. Then, in 2002, he started working at Le Vive Jewelry, where he joined his old friend Hugo Sanchez. Luis has worked as the senior master watchmaker at Le Vive Jewelry ever since.