At SIHH 2019, George Cramer was pleased to see a stunning new historically inspired Santos-Dumont model in stainless steel. And to his Cartier-enamored eye it looks even better than the model from the now-defunct Collection Privée Cartier Paris (CPCP) line.
In the 1968 film ‘The Thomas Crown Affair,’ Steve McQueen played the title character, a millionaire businessman and avid sportsman involved in a cat-and-mouse game with an insurance claims investigator played by Faye Dunaway. McQueen chose two of his personal watches to wear in the film: an elegant Cartier Tank Cintrée and a Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox. But when Nick Gould looked further into this, he discovered that contrary to popular opinion McQueen also surprisingly owned a Tank.
After showing high complications such as minute repeaters and tourbillons at the SIHH for the past decade, 2019 saw the release of Cartier’s oldest men’s model in a surprisingly new and simple version that became the talk of the trade show. It is also quartz-powered. George Cramer explains why.
While watching a recent clip from the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Nick Gould noticed that Chris Pratt was wearing a watch on each wrist – and both from Cartier. On his right wrist was a Calibre de Cartier Chronograph and on the left a Calibre de Cartier Diver. Why would he do that?
The Cartier Ceinture was named after its case, which is shaped like a belt’s buckle (‘ceinture’ is the French word for belt). This Cartier watch with a very interesting square case featuring corners that appear to be “cut” and an unusual crown to be found nowhere else in the collection is a hidden gem on the market for vintage watches. George Cramer explains why.
At SIHH 2019, George Cramer was pleased to see a stunning new historically inspired Santos-Dumont model in stainless steel. And to his eye it looks even better than the model from the now-defunct Collection Privée Cartier Paris (CPCP) line.
One of the most beautiful things about Cartier is that once it created the perfect watch, the designers pretty much left it alone. Meaning that the whims of fashion did not get a hold on models like the Tonneau – for the simple reason that it transcended fashion. And now a new version arrives in 2019. So what (if anything) has changed to make Martin Green proclaim that it heralds the age of elegance?
Here George Cramer looks across more than one hundred years of evolution of what may well be called the world’s first pilot’s wristwatch: the Cartier Santos-Dumont.
Nineteenth-century French horologist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, a man now famous as the father of modern magic, inspired Cartier to begin dabbling in mystery clocks in 1912. And the famous brand has never stopped as a recent exhibition showing 19 historical mystery clocks illustrated.
Since its very early years, one of Cartier’s strengths aside from jewelry and watches has surprisingly been accessories for men. In fact, cufflinks appeared in Cartier records as far back as 1859. Here George Cramer explores modern and vintage options for a nice personal touch.