‘It’s Important to Be Very Sober’: Cartier’s Creative Director on What Shapes the House’s Designs
Among the 54 brands exhibiting at Watches and Wonders in Geneva earlier this month, few can rival the creative energy displayed by Cartier. The booth was teeming with wildlife, including new renditions of the ubiquitous panther, a zebra/crocodile conflation set with tsavorites, rubies or black spinels, and another gemset creature that identifies as a crocodile, but could easily be a cute seahorse. In the wild-imagination category, there was the Reflection de Cartier, an architectural, gem-studded cuff watch with an unusual twist, and the Polymorph collection of jeweled watches that look like something else – a claw that clutches your lapel, or a carabiner that might double as a high-end key chain. And on the more horologically focused side, there was the quirky Santos-Dumont Rewind that tells time in reverse. These creations are a team effort, but many of them originated in the imagination of artistic director Marie-Laure Cérède.
Where did you find the inspiration for the Animal Jewelry Watch? Was it inspired by something from the archives? What animal is it?
There is a mix of things. First, we wanted to make a chimera, an illusory creature that, instead of being easily defined, had the features of two or more sets of animals. The idea was to emphasize the imagery of the creature – you don’t know if it’s a zebra, a tiger, or even a crocodile, especially on the green (tsavorite garnet) version. And I like this because I think it’s less immediate. It’s a more inspirational image in the bestiary of Cartier. This was important to me, to open a new door. Sculpting shapes inspired animals is very interesting for us. So, that was the first idea. The second idea was that we were inspired by the Cartier Pebble, one of our beautiful shaped cases [first made by Cartier London in 1972, and produced only in very limited editions since then]. The idea was really to sculpt the case shape with the pattern of the animal. So, it’s more a chimera of animal inspirations than of animal figurations.
It’s reminiscent of Cartier’s crocodile-themed jewelry and the watch inspired by that motif, the La Doña.
Yeah. Certainly, you’re right. There’s a little bit of that in it. It’s the same spirit. Very sculptural.
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It’s very imaginative, yet somehow pure Cartier. Can you tell us something about the formula for achieving that? How do you walk the line between the signature Cartier aesthetic and doing something completely new?
Each creative process is very unique, but usually, it starts by coming back to the archives, regarding the icons or the existing shapes we have. For instance, with the new Tortue, we went back to the archives and had a look at all the original Tortue cases. And then, you have to take the best thing of each one to make the right combination. The hard part for us was more about how to achieve something as thin, as sophisticated today as it was years ago. It’s very demanding, achieving something very thin, very qualitative. We have to boost the technique to stretch the manufacture, to achieve the perfect shape at the end. And on the other hand, we are also creating a new design, and that is not as easy. We are trying to not be too much beholden to our archives, but to be free, however at the end we need to sign it Cartier. This is why this is hard. Starting from scratch is easy. Making a fine Cartier product is very hard. So, it’s an important responsibility.
How do you know if it’s going to work or not? Have you ever decided not to produce a new design?
We don’t succeed every time. Sometimes it’s not good and we don’t launch it. And we feel it. Sometimes you work months on a design and it’s not good at the end. It’s like, “This is not Cartier.” It’s maybe sometimes too clinical or it’s not timeless. So, it has to be an aesthetic statement, timeless, sober. For me, it’s important to be very sober.
Sober?
Yes, pure. What I mean by this is that we need to remove every ornamentation, every decorative part. Everything should be meaningful in the design. It’s very easy to add many things and to have a beautiful product at the end, beautiful creation, but it doesn’t mean anything. At Cartier, we need to be very pure and simple in the line. So, nothing should be decorative at the end. Even for this, if you look at the rubies here [in the ruby version of the Animal Jewelry watch], they are really put in a place where there is a line, which is part of the architecture. So, everything is integrated. It’s not just putting rubies just to have a beautiful decor onto a case. It’s part of the architecture.
Was the Reflection jewelry watch also inspired by architecture and coherent lines?
Yes. The idea was to create a bangle, but in three dimensions and sculpted. It’s a hollowed out bangle that was also inspired by the Toi et Moi concept, a ring where you have two stones facing each other. I was thinking we need to revisit this in watchmaking. So you have these two arms that meet in the middle above the wrist. Each is different from the other, but instead of two stones, we put the watch dial at one end and a mirror at the other. It’s also a play on the concept of time. Because I think for ladies now we need to come also with a different notion of time, not only functional and not only mechanical time, but also something more dream-like or something that is more meditative in a way.
How is the design process different when reinventing an icon, such as this year’s Tortue? Do you work closely with product marketing and other departments. Is it more restrictive?
Marie-Laure:I don’t like to speak about restrictions, but of opportunities. I think we have a unique position in the watchmaking industry, which can be very helpful for creation. We are more a jeweler than a watchmaker, first a jeweler. So, even for the Tortue Chrono Monopoussoir, we knew that when we launched it, it had to be different. We had to add something. And this is why we redesigned not only the case, but also the movement. Before, it was a round movement into the Tortue case. So, this is where the restriction means also more creativity and more opportunity to reinvent something. We also made it slimmer than the last one we had in our current collection. But when you come back to the 1929 original piece, it was also very slim. What we see here is technicalities obeying the design. We decided to remain a small, relatively small size because it’s Tortue.
You’ve used the word “sober” but it seems there’s always room for a little bit of whimsy at Cartier.
It’s true. It’s pure, but there’s also a touch of humor. It’s important for us to be creative. We need to be not too rigid or traditional. This is the way to get the connection with our clients, the young generations. And also the way to give a new view on watchmaking, on watches, especially for ladies. So you will see with Polymorph, for example, it’s very playful. But it’s more than that, it’s fun. It’s beautiful jewelry pieces that can stand alone without any watches. You have the surprise of the watch inside.
How does the design process work? Do you draw something first and then find out if it’s possible to make it?
The process is always the same, we start by hand because the emotion is thanks to the hand, not to the computer for sure. We are making different renderings by hand. And then when you have a … I won’t come into the process of validation because I think it’s quite confidential. But what I can tell you is that when you have a good product, beautiful design, beautiful drawing, it’s always validated, even if it is very risky, very audacious, very surprising. I don’t know how everybody’s so aware of the Cartier signature, which is impossible to define. The best I can do is say that when people look at the product, they say, “Cartier is the only one to be able to do this.”
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