September 7, 2022 |
Want to win at life? Be more Cartier. I don’t mean drape yourself in Love bracelets and panthers, although that would be nice. I mean adopt the values of the brand and apply them to the rest of your life. Cartier has a sense of living legacy. Everything they make has an unassailably modern quality, but these items are also built to last and then be passed on. Principles we can all buy into. Forget short-term, instant gratification; instead, invest in longform satisfaction.
Imagine if we applied that rule to everything, from the jobs we choose to the food we buy, from the clothes we wear and the fuel we use (and subsidise) to the politicians we vote for. We’d have to block out the white noise of populism and social media but we might end up with something beautiful that has lasting meaning which will endure beyond the churn of TikTok trends.
“Cartier is about a specific [type of] creative expression, which is The Cartier Style,” says Pierre Rainero, the brand’s Image, Style and Heritage Director. “Since the beginning of the 20th century, it’s been something that differentiates Cartier very strongly. It is more than something visible in our creations, it is beyond that; it is a question of internal culture.” The Cartier brothers didn’t call themselves jewellers but “artist merchants”. “These artistic dimensions are at the core, the centre, the heart of a work of Cartier. And all our contemporary creations bear the same dimension, the same aspect, the same Cartier culture,” says Rainero.
The brand was founded in 1847 by Louis-François Cartier and passed on through his family to his grandsons Louis, Pierre and Jacques, who made it into an icon of 20th century luxury that King Edward VII, the Queen’s great-grandfather, once described as, “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers”. That solid gold reputation remains true today. As well as unparalleled craftsmanship, timeless relevance is also a Cartier signature. You see its trademark combination of innovative design and elegant styling in the modern proportions of the famous Santos wristwatch, which Louis Cartier created in 1904 for a friend, the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. It’s there too in 1919’s Tank watch, with its distinctive square and rectangular face.
During the interwar years, Cartier captured the modernity of the times not just in the lines of its designs but with how its creations fit into the lives of its customers. The Trinity ring first appeared in 1924 and was unisex (Jean Cocteau owned one and the Duke of Windsor wore his on his pinkie; he also gave Wallis Simpson a Cartier engagement ring), a daring notion at that time. Unlike much of the jewellery of the day, which was worn as matching sets, the Trinity ring was designed to stand alone. It celebrated a sense of individuality, which still feels relevant today.
For Rainero, Cartier’s secret weapon is its ability to keep pace with modern life and its manners and morals. “That’s another aspect that is very important to Cartier, that curiosity and attention given to the evolutions taking place in the lives of our clients, in the way they behave, interact and the way they also wear, show and use their precious jewellery and accessories,” he says.
Their innovations continued in the 1960s, with the radical Crash watch, which looked like one of the melting clocks in Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory (a 1967 Crash original recently fetched £1.36 million at auction). In 1969, we saw the launch of the famed, screw-on, Love bracelet, designed by Aldo Cipullo (who also created the famous Juste une Clou nail-bracelet), which was accompanied by an innovative marketing campaign that gifted two to the celebrity couples of the day including famed jewellery lover Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen.
“What is interesting, and what is also studied on a regular basis, is the permanent evolution of that Cartier style. The living aspect of this work.” Rainero adds that the brand often presents antique pieces for sale together with its latest creations to show the elements of continuity and evolution that are intrinsically Cartier.
The company’s corporate ownership has changed over the years (the family sold up in 1964 and it was eventually bought by the Richemont group in 1988) but its commitment to artistic originality and freedom of creative expression is no less daring in 2022 than it was a century ago. This year sees a slew of innovations in its jewellery and accessories. The most audacious is Sacai designer Chitose Abe’s reimagining of the Trinity ring, which sees her deconstruct and reinvent the “three rings in one” idea for a new generation. The collaboration came about organically, after Abe approached Cartier’s design team and asked them to create a modified, made-to-order version of the ring just for her. Sketches were exchanged and the project grew from a personal one into a special endeavour, with Abe exploding the rose, yellow and white gold rings across three or even four fingers as well as creating an asymmetric bracelet and necklace version, and an inventive pair of hoop earrings which can be worn up to four different ways. The emphasis is on the wearer suiting themselves. “I wanted it to look like Trinity, but then again, to be very different,” said Abe. “I explored how the shape changes in movement, the distance between the rings serving as a metaphor for the tension between the values of fidelity, capturing and freezing it as if in motion to make something new from a starting point of something familiar.”
Elsewhere the maison is reimagining its emblematic animal, with the curvaceous, new Panthére de Cartier handbag. The panther was a favourite of Jeanne Toussaint, the legendary designer whom Louis Cartier appointed as director of fine jewellery in 1933. He called her “Le Petit Panthère” because of her obsession with the animal and her penchant for wearing a panther-fur coat. She first put the predator’s image on a handbag clasp in 1925 and created several panther pieces for the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, in 1948, which sparked a craze for big cat jewellery. It has appeared periodically on Cartier bags ever since, but the latest iteration features a new stylised panther head clasp and a faceted chain, which has the reassuring Cartier clink of quality. Marlin Yuson, Cartier’s Director of Accessory and Leather Goods Design, describes this marriage of jewellery and leather craftsmanship as “an encounter between the wild and precious,” adding, “the dialogue of craftspeople enables us to advance our understanding of leather goods. Like an extension of femininity, it’s demanding and refined.”
High-quality jewellery and watchmaking are at the heart of the house and each year the two pillars come together in the highly collectible Libre watch. In a tradition started four years ago, the craftspeople at the house are given total creative freedom to create a unique hybrid jewel/watch. For 2022, Libre is inspired by a spectacular rock-crystal and diamond bracelet created in the 1930s and worn by actress Gloria Swanson. Its unconventional triangular construction is entirely reversible, thanks to an innovative “elasticated” bracelet. The dazzling piece, which can be flipped and worn two ways, comes in three different colour/stone iterations. Make no mistake, this is serious jewellery, studded with diamonds and multicoloured precious stones, but it has an intense feel of play. There’s a tendency for heritage houses to play it safe, but at Cartier, audacity, freedom and modernity rule. The Libre’s beauty and boldness is oh-so Cartier. The legacy lives on.
Issue 69 of 10 Magazine – PEACE, COURAGE, FREEDOM – is on newsstands September 9. Pre-order your copy here.
CARTIER: MODERN TREASURES
Photographer ROB RUSLING
Creative Director SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Text CLAUDIA CROFT
Hair SERAIAH ARTISTRY
Make-up ANDREW GALLIMORE at Of Substance using MAC Cosmetics
Model LEOMIE ANDERSON at Tess Management
Nail technician MARIE-LOUISE COSTER at Nylon
Photographer’s assistants ADAM ROBERTS and FREDDIE STISTED
Fashion assistant BRITTANY NEWMAN
Make-up assistant KITE CHUANG
Digital operator JOE COLLEY
Casting SIX WOLVES
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU
Retouching INK
Swimwear throughout by DILARA FINDIKOGLU and corset by MUGLER
