The Cartier Crash happened at an fascinating second within the historical past of the corporate. In 1967, Cartier London was the final of the three historic Cartier boutiques which have been nonetheless being run by a member of the household – the boutiques, though related traditionally, have been unbiased companies (Cartier New York was offered in 1962, and Cartier Paris, in 1966). To say it was a time of upheaval for conventional luxurious is to say nothing in any respect. Cartier was the main consultant, bar none, of conventional European and French notions of luxurious and had constructed its enterprise on catering to the wants of royalty, and (particularly in America) these aspiring to be royalty. Within the Sixties, nonetheless, this white-glove strategy to luxurious was starting to look more and more untenable and antiquated and as a gesture to the zeitgeist, Cartier London, underneath Jean-Jacques Cartier’s course, produced a small handful of watches that have been, for Cartier, as dramatic a break with custom because it had ever identified.
