Cartier has an exemplary reputation for innovative jewellery designs using exquisite gems. The luxury brand at this year's SIHH demonstrated its ability to combine high jewellery with sophisticated watchmaking and revealed its ambitions for complicated mechanisms.
The Baignoire watch is legendary in the Cartier archives. Its simple design - a perfect oval - was launched in 1912 and has remained timeless ever since. This year, the brand launched a more streamlined edition to appeal to the 21st-century woman.
Cartier's designers played with the shape of the watch, wanting to update its aesthetics while retaining its iconic characteristics. Gone are the faceted surfaces and the curved, domed case and in comes a finely sculpted glass replacement. Cartier's major aesthetic codes, though, are adhered to with straight Roman numerals, long flowing lines and a dotted rail-track detail on the dial.
Serge Rabassa, Cartier's director of watch creation, said it was a difficult task to rework the Baignoire. 'It was a challenge to make it modern,' he said. 'It has 100 years of history. The old model was rounder and feminine. The final result, I think, is simple, but we had to take everything away until there was nothing left. The task was to find an elegant, architectural shape.'
Two sizes are available: a large model, which is fitted with a manual winding mechanical movement, and a smaller size. Colour and material variations include a large rhodium-plated white gold model, set with round diamonds, and a pink gold model. Small models come in yellow gold and rhodium-plated white gold, set with diamonds. Evening variations see all-gold or diamond-studded aesthetics.
In the men's collection, Cartier takes a quantum leap into the world of high watchmaking. The luxury brand has ambitions to develop its own movements and last year's Ballon Bleu de Cartier Flying Tourbillon marked its first foray into the complicated world of calibres. The watch was fitted with Cartier's 9452 MC-calibre stamped with the Geneva Seal and was distinguished by its flying tourbillon with a C-shaped cage to indicate the seconds. The aesthetics of the movement were maximised and given a prominent position on the dial.