THE ART OF TIME

Cartier invented the wristwatch. Now, 100 years later, it is celebrating its history and its future as a watch manufacture by taking an astonishing museum show around the world. Darius Sanai caught up with some of the key people behind the brand

Wander through either of the big watch festivals in the coming months, the SIHH in Geneva (by invitation only) or the Baselworld Watch and Jewellery behemoth in Basel (open to all) and you will be engulfed in a sea of luxury timepiece brands. High-end watch design and its stubbornly non-digital technology are, counterintuitively, thriving in a digital era of economic slowdown.

From U-Boat to Hublot, and from Jaeger-LeCoultre to Patek Philippe, luxury watches are thriving. And yet, it behoves us sometimes to take a step back and look at where it all came from. And that's a small irony of the watch world: while mechanical timepieces are made to last forever, it's hard to get a physical insight into anything but the very latest collections.

Which is where Cartier's Time Art exhibition comes in. Cartier is not and could never be just another luxury watch brand. Like Mercedes-Benz with the car, Cartier can legitimately claim to have invented the wristwatch, in 1904, when Louis Cartier was commissioned to make a watch capable of being strapped onto the wrist of his friend, Alberto Santos-Dumont, a pioneering aviator. (The reason? Santos- Dumont apparently didn't want to have to fish into his pocket for his watch while trying to fly.)

Cartier had been making timepieces for some decades already, but this was the world's first wristwatch, and the Cartier Santos was put into production in 1911, and still adorns the wrists of the world's discerning men today.

All that puts much of Cartier's more recent history into perspective, for the "jeweller of kings" has had an A-list clientele that no celebrity endorsement manager now would dream of being able to put together. Marilyn Monroe, Princess Grace of Monaco, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Rudoph Valentino, Marlene Dietrich, various kings, queens and their offspring have all been Cartier fans (and not been paid to be so). The numbers are so high it would be easier to compile a list of the glitterati through the generations who have not been fans than those who have.

Time Art is a travelling global exhibition that seeks to gently remind luxury consumers of the company's heritage. "It was always a dream of mine to have an exhibition showing the specific vision of Cartier in terms of watchmaking," says the company's creative director, Pierre Rainero. It is an exhibition of the history of Cartier timepieces - not just wristwatches but pocket watches and the extraordinary mystery clocks, each of them now a museum piece. (Mystery clocks are so called because the hands appear to float, unsupported; the Romanov-era Fabergé and Cartier were the leading makers.)

There's the Marine Repeater of 1926, with its ship's bell strike; the Tortue (turtle) Minute Repeater of 1928; an original Santos (imagine owning one of the original wristwatches!); and near-priceless gems like the Large Portique Mystery Clock of 1923, made of gold, platinum, rock crystal, coral, onyx, enamel and rose-cut diamonds - just in case you were wondering whether Hublot's current concept of "fusion" was an original one.

As extraordinary as the company's legacy are its designs, from the original Santos and Tank to the decorative Art Nouveau and Art Deco items of the first half of the 20th century, when Cartier was a creator that could genuinely be said to be part of those design movements, rather than simply responding to them. And then there's the 1967-issue Crash, which appears like it's emerged from under the wheels of a pile-up; all the way up to today's concept ID1 watch.

The show itself started in Zurich in the second half of 2011 and has now moved to Singapore, and is open to all. Rainero naturally says that Asia forms a key part of the company's future. "In Singapore there is an interesting phenomenon in that many of the collectors are women. I am always amazed by the knowledge of collectors in Asia: they are true collectors, not just watch lovers."

And what of the next 100 plus years for Cartier? "What is interesting for Cartier is a palette of possibilities," Rainero says. "We have always made jewellery watches for women, and now there is the possibility of making jewellery watches with beautiful shapes and also complicated movements. Our philosophy is to marry beautiful design with technology, each is equally important, and perhaps all watch manufacturers are not like that."

In order to get even further insight into how the brand will develop in the future, I spoke to the company's legendary UK Chairman Arnaud Bamberger, and MD Francois Le Troquer, in London, about Cartier, its famous polo association, and numerous points beyond.

Darius Sanai: How do you balance Cartier being traditional and contemporary and fashionable, all at the same time?

Francois Le Troquer: I would say we are not fashionable. We are not in fashion, we are contemporary, that is the right word. First, it's about our creations. Look at the Tank watch, it was created at the beginning of the last century, it's been worn by Jackie O and Andy Warhol, why does everyone like it so much? Because it's timeless, it's elegant, it's Cartier, and we are launching new models every year but Tank is a legend, it's an iconic product that will always be there.

DS: With the watches, you recently took the decision to become a complete manufacture, making every part yourselves. Why?

FLT: First and foremost, it's not like we are new in the watch industry, as you can see with Time Art, where we wanted to show that we are not new born in the watch industry, we have been doing watches for many, many years! And you see now with the emerging markets like, China and Russia, they are really crazy about watches, about not only the style but the movement as well. Why do the Chinese buy Chateau Lafite? Because they are buying from the most legitimate houses, but they also buy for the quality of the wine, because they know what they are buying, and that's exactly why we started to initiate the completely full integration of our movements and very soon, 100% of the movements in our watches are going to be Cartier movements.

DS: So you've made a lot of technical innovations under the skin?

AB: Correct. We have decided to push the throttle on the technical side because we were mostly known for our design and sometimes, a bit too feminine, or feminine rather than masculine, and there's a huge market obviously for haute horlogerie watches, more technical, and we definitely want to be there. We are among the best names in the world, if not the best, we definitely needed to show that we could be there big time, so we invested, and we decided to go quite strong on the manufacturing side and show that not only are we capable of doing the best, but we can do much more than the others and be the leaders.

DS: What about celebrity endorsement? Cartier has been so closely associated with great celebrities in the last 100 years but these days, everybody has celebrity endorsement. Arnaud Bamberger: It's not as important as one thinks, that's my answer. Of course it's always nice to have Angelina Jolie or whoever to wear your necklace, the problem is that, today, you see so many celebrities, mainly actresses, wearing a Chopard one day because they have a contract with Chopard for the Cannes Film Festival, but the next day in Hollywood they are wearing Van Cleef & Arpels, and then at the Baftas they wear a Cartier, so where is the story there? So you see them wearing different types of things and it doesn't add that much, is my feeling about it. It's not something that’s important, and I think that there is a race for endorsement, which is a bit crazy, especially now when all these famous celebrities are looking for a reward out of it, and we're not in that game.

With celebrities, it's important for the story of a brand, including Cartier, when we speak of Grace Kelly, or Liz Taylor...or Richard Burton...this is something that people will speak about. If the Duchess of Windsor wears something, this is very important, that is a celebrity endorsement that counts. But if Kate Winslet or whoever is wearing a Van Cleef or whatever, honestly who cares, it's not that important, ok, because everybody knows that it's just for an evening, that they don't own it, that it's not something that they bought, it's just something that somebody gave them for the evening. But with people like Liz Taylor or Jackie Kennedy or people like that...

FLT: They bought their product, you know, it's a real love story, it's not like we created the story, the people, the clients created the love story.

DS: What about the BRIC countries? Are they the future?

AB: Of course we can't ignore those markets, all those emerging markets, they're there, they're different, one from the others, and they grow at different paces, and some will be much bigger than others. In China, we've been there for the past 10 years. India is not a big market yet but maybe one day it will be. It used to be at one time a big market, because we were the providers and suppliers to maharajas, and they were great clients and great supporters of Cartier and we enjoyed that.