Common to all continents, the global city or megacity has been a new territory of inspiration for Cartier since the beginning of the 2010s.
Cartier has always sought to broaden its outlook on the world. Enchanted by the diversity of landscapes, curious about ancient and contemporary civilizations, the jeweler has long scoured the wild beauty of Africa, the magnificence of Pharaonic Egypt, the myths of Asia and the Americas… The Maison’s atlas of style knows no frontiers.
In the second decade of the new millennium, Cartier set out to explore a new continent shared by all regions of the globe: the global city. The city space has always been a favorite creative realm for designers. In his time, Louis Cartier encouraged them to explore Haussmann’s Paris, sketchbook in hand, ready to capture some detail of a façade, a balustrade or a pediment.
Always in step with the times, the Maison now borrows the architectures, interplays of light and shadow, diversity and lust for speed from the megacities. We find all of this concentrated, for example, in a bracelet crafted in 2013. The design traces out a taut line, emphasized in onyx, shifting from a square-shaped sapphire at one end to a triangular-shaped diamond at the other. The dynamic of the composition also derives from a tessellated array of nuanced, color-graded sapphires, evoking a sense of light reflecting off the glass façade of a skyscraper.