The Cartier appointment at Watches & Wonders this year was, as always, a dizzying experience. The incredible breadth of the collection is unlike anything you’ll see at Palexpo during Watches & Wonders week, and it always amazes me how freely these incredibly valuable, intricate creations are passed around a table of watch media types to handle, photograph, and try on. It would be absolutely impossible to run down everything we were shown in our meeting, but I keep coming back to a selection of releases that zero in on Cartier’s unique bracelet making capabilities.
This is not something I normally expect from Cartier, but maybe I should. I think for the most part we recognize Cartier as masters of design and shape – there have been so many great case designs over the brand’s history it’s impossible to recount them all here. Some have become genuinely iconic and some have been a bit lost to history, but their ingenuity and creativity is second to none and they have the reputation they deserve as a design first brand for good reason.
In our mind’s eye, collectively, we typically see these watches on straps. But for certain references a bracelet is key to understanding not just the visual design language, but in how these watches wear. Because a great bracelet doesn’t complete the look of a watch, it makes or breaks the experience of having it on your wrist, and can take a watch from being a beautiful design object to something you’d actually want to have on your wrist on a day to day basis.
My personal favorite example of this phenomenon is the Tank Normale. The Normale was brought back a few years ago to a great deal of fanfare, and this platinum edition with a platinum bracelet is almost impossibly luxurious. The Normale is a relatively small watch in terms of its case size, coming in at 32.6 mm x 25.7. That’s actually a great size for a Tank and it looks universally great on literally every wrist I’ve seen it on, regardless of size. But in platinum, on the wrist, it feels enormous because of the weight, and the dichotomy there is a fascinating part of the wearing experience. The seven row bracelet is a work of art unto itself.
In spite of its heft, or perhaps because of it, it’s a pleasure to have on the wrist. There’s a very distinct appeal in wearing a very heavy watch, and this much platinum, arranged in a slinky, incredibly luxurious way.
Even slinkier and more luxurious are new editions of the Santos Dumont with a 15-link, mesh-like bracelet in either yellow gold or platinum. These bracelets are modeled after custom metal bracelets that the brand was making in the 1920s. The links measure 1.15mm thick and there are nearly 400 of them in a single bracelet. It’s an incredibly intricate design, with finishing that can only be accomplished by hand given the small size of each individual link.
The platinum version has a similar impressive heft as the Tank Normale, but it’s the yellow gold Santos Dumont with an obsidian dial that stole the meeting. This was one of my favorite watches of the entire show with the dial doing much of the heavy lifting. According to Cartier, the obsidian originates from volcanic material sourced in Mexico, and is cut to a thickness of 0.3mm before being polished. We’ve all seen a lot of stone dials over these last few years as they’ve come back into fashion across the board, but this one is truly special and illustrates the difference between inexpensive stone sourced from large scale suppliers and much higher quality materials that get the attention of talented artisans. There’s a depth and luster to this dial that is several steps above stone dials from many other brands, which can often appear flat and not as vibrant as you’d like them to be. In addition to the obsidian dial, the yellow gold Santos Dumont is also available with a dial in a more traditional silver satin finish.
The retail pricing on the platinum Tank Normale (which is part of the “Cartier Privé” collection) is available upon request from the brand, although it’s likely that as with most Privé releases, these were spoken for immediately, and perhaps before the official launch. The Santos Dumont is priced between $49,300 and $62,000 on the bracelet, depending on metal and dial variant. The gold version with the obsidian dial is a limited edition, but Cartier has not disclosed the production number. Cartier
Zach Kazan
2026-04-28 16:00:00