THE JOURNAL
It’s hard to imagine now, but about 15 years ago, the hottest Cartier watch was a 50mm high-concept by the name of the Astroregulateur. It was cased in a futuristic alloy of niobium and titanium, cost a quarter of a million pounds and looked like a prop from a science-fiction series.
A far cry from the familiar faces of the Tank and Santos, you might rightly think. But from the early 2000s, Cartier had set its sights on being taken seriously as a watchmaker. And the prevailing wisdom at the time was that this meant embracing cutting-edge technology. Hence for almost a decade, Cartier invested heavily in futuristic alloys, devilishly complicated functions and completely new shapes. It even pioneered a series of concept watches with vacuum-sealed cases and carbon components, intended to eliminate friction from mechanical movements altogether.
It got watch nerds very excited, but it was hardly the stuff that would entice Tyler, the Creator to don a Cartier for his next album cover shoot or be likely to appear courtside on Jay-Z’s wrist. It also sat somewhat awkwardly with Cartier’s 150-year history as “the jeweller of kings, and the king of jewellers”. The Cartier of the early 2010s was instead a brand besotted with new shapes and styles; the Drive de Cartier, Rotonde de Cartier, Clé de Cartier and so on.
A few watches of the modern era, such as the Ballon Bleu, have survived, but many more have passed into the archives. Then, in 2016, Cartier appointed a new CEO, Cyrille Vigneron. And if Cartier today is one of the coolest, and most bankable watch brands – and it is – it is largely down to him.
Vigneron took the solid foundations that he inherited, a back catalogue and brand image that few could ever match – don’t forget that Cartier made one of the earliest wristwatches of all time, the 1904 Santos-Dumont – and set about refocusing on elegance. “Innovation is the most overrated word in watchmaking,” he noted. And while that should not be taken to mean he did not care for new ideas, under his tenure (which ended in 2024), Cartier revived some of its most glamorous and exalted designs while bringing a newfound zest to its ever-present classics.
In 2018, Cartier reissued the Crash, a near-mythical design of the 1960s, made in tiny numbers and blessed with a too-good-to-be-true origin story. It was not, despite the unkillable nature of legends on the internet of today, modelled on a round watch that was damaged in a car accident. But this myth has definitely helped establish its allure.
Other successes have followed. Numerous variants of the Tank, including the Tank Asymétrique and Tank Chinoise, the Pebble, the Tonneau and the Baignoire have all been held up as highlights over the past few years. When men’s style became more accommodating of different visions of masculinity – see Harry Styles, Timothée Chalamet et al – dress watches (and ladies’ watches) sprang to the fore. And, although it’s impossible to completely separate cause and effect, Cartier has undoubtedly been a beneficiary.
Watches such as the Tank Française, Tank Louis Cartier and Santos are the engine room of Cartier’s commercial performance. However, the Crash is the poster boy for the modern brand’s return to form. These two sides, the critical and the commercial, were operating in harmony when, in 2021, Cartier overtook Omega as the second most profitable watch brand, after Rolex, where it has remained. Morgan Stanley, which compiles the annual report, said this year that, “Cartier has managed to achieve something very few luxury brands are able to by providing affordability and selling significant volumes, whilst maintaining its perception of exclusivity”.
But the Crash, by dint of its enormous popularity with all the right A-listers (Messrs Chalamet, Bunny and -Z) as well as some very well-timed seven-figure auction results, has done more than relocate Cartier’s mojo. It has helped kick-start a new fashion for elegant dress watches that has swept the entire industry.
Today, watches such as the Piaget Andy Warhol, Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso and Vacheron Constantin 1921 are riding high with connoisseurs. Brands that once relied on sporty pilot’s watches or chronographs have pivoted to sleeker, dressier styles. It is no coincidence that maisons such as Hermès Timepieces have revamped their men’s watch offering, majoring on shape, texture and form rather than on technical specs alone.
A decade after Vigneron took the helm, the passion for slimline elegance and simple, hours-and-minutes watchmaking is so established that a whole generation of start-up brands is working from the same playbook. Proving that you don’t need to venture outside of your comfort zone to inspire widespread evolution. You just need confidence in the classics.