{"id":62532,"date":"2021-05-07T12:31:50","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T11:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/?p=62532"},"modified":"2021-05-07T18:20:39","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T17:20:39","slug":"the-colourful-past-present-and-future-of-cartier-watches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/the-colourful-past-present-and-future-of-cartier-watches\/","title":{"rendered":"The colourful past, present and future of Cartier watches"},"content":{"rendered":"
Simon de Burton recalls halcyon days cruising a windswept Scarborough seafront; sparking up a doobie, perhaps, using a Cartier lighter and cocooned in a Cartier edition Lincoln Continental.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me feel like Yorkshire\u2019s answer to Huggy Bear,\u201d recalled my old friend Bruce when I reminded him of the time we cruised Scarborough\u2019s seafront in his 1979 Lincoln Continental, acquired the previous day as a mobile marketing tool to promote a thriving jet ski hire business \u2014 in exchange for just 10 crisp, \u00a350 notes.<\/p>\n
With its 462 cubic inch engine (that\u2019s 7.6 litres in Euro-speak), white leather interior, white shag-pile carpet and dazzling white paintwork, it certainly turned heads amid the faded Victorian grandeur of the northern resort where more usual traffic comprised Ford Escorts, Vauxhall Astras and Austin Allegros.<\/p>\n
By then, Bruce\u2019s \u201879 Continental – once a passable Cadillac rival – was 15 years old and a down-at-heel luxury dinosaur that had succeeded in living up to its name by roaming to a continent on which it was entirely irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n
And it wasn\u2019t any old Continental, either, but a top-of- the- range Cartier edition, complete with numbered dashboard plaque, the word \u2018Cartier\u2019 sprinkled liberally throughout the interior and distinctive, square instruments marked with the famous entwined \u2018C\u2019s and featuring the ribbed look found on Cartier\u2019s Oval lighters.<\/p>\n
Lending its hallowed name to a pimped-up ride was just one of the dubious decisions made by Cartier management during the 1970s, a period when the \u2018jeweller of kings and king of jewellers\u2019 was experiencing a financial downturn of right royal proportions, leading it to follow a business model established by Pierre Cardin that revolved around offering licensing arrangements \u2014 some of which were more appropriate than others.<\/p>\n
Among the best was the one granted to entrepreneur Robert Hocq in 1968.<\/p>\n
At the time, Hocq was head of the Silver Match cigarette lighter company which was licensed by Cartier Paris to produce the aforementioned Oval lighter, a good-looking, pleasingly tactile and innovative item with a retractable spark wheel.<\/p>\n
Although it was every bit as well-made as a Cartier item was expected to be and was supplied in the brand\u2019s distinctive and coveted packaging, the Oval came with an unusually affordable price tag due to being gold plated rather than made from the far more expensive 18 carat stuff with which the brand was associated.<\/p>\n
Just a year later, Hocq recruited a 26-year-old Alain-Dominique Perrin to work at \u2018Briquets de Cartier\u2019 and, within 12 months appointed him as managing director.<\/p>\n
The Cartier family had sold the dynastic business in 1964, leaving the \u2018original\u2019 Cartier with just four stores \u2014 in Hong-Kong, Geneva, Munich and Paris, with Cartier London and Cartier New York no longer being part of the main group.<\/p>\n
Hocq and Perrin, together with another entrepreneur called Joseph Kanoui, set about unifying the world of Cartier, first by buying-back Cartier Paris in 1972, followed by London (\u201874) and finally New York (76) to create \u2018Cartier International\u2019 (of which Perrin served as managing director from 1981 to 2001).<\/p>\n