A surprising fact about Marie-Laure Cérède, Cartier's creative director of watchmaking, is that she never wears her wristwatch set to the right time. “It’s a creative statement,” she tells Vogue. “I don’t want my Cartier watch to tell me the time. My time is busy, and this is an object of grace and beauty.” Her words echo that of artist Andy Warhol, who was rarely seen without his Cartier Tank, of which he once said: “I don’t wear a Tank watch to tell the time. Actually, I never even wind it. I wear a Tank because it is the watch to wear.”
Watches created by the 174-year-old maison, which first began as a jeweller, have long adorned the wrists of the stylish and influential, from Princess Diana (Tank Solo) and Michelle Obama (Tank Francaise) to Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid (both Panthère de Cartier fans). And Cérède is charged with building on that legacy, which can be traced back to 1904 – when Louis Cartier first created a watch with a leather strap for Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont.
At the Watches and Wonders trade show (7 to 13 April) in Geneva, Switzerland, Cartier unveiled several new designs including the particularly innovative and achingly chic SolarBeat Tank Must (the maison’s first solar-powered watch), complete with non-animal leather strap. We caught up with Cérède over Zoom during this year’s digital event to find out what makes her tick.
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