Timeless and eternal icons
In many English-speaking nations, 1St of April is known as April Fool’s Day, where we play tricks and funny jokes on our friends, but at the Watches & Wonders 2025 in Geneva, it’s all business as usual. At Cartier’s booth, the air of suspense and intrigue is so thick you could have sliced through with a butter knife. Journalists and buyers eagerly waited for their turn to view the novelties for this year. After all these years, we still wait with anticipation to see what the creator of the shapes of wristwatches has to offer.
Without further ado, we would like to unveil some of the numerous offerings the Maison will unveil gradually and gracefully throughout the year.
Tank Louis Cartier
This year, Cartier decided to introduce the Tank Louis Cartier in a very special way to commemorate the creator himself, maintaining the same elegance and adhering to the DNA of the original timepiece created in 1917 at the onset of the Art Deco period, which was inspired by the Renault’s war machines he witnessed during WWII. For 2025, the watch will have the merest hint of change, so subtle you may miss it if you blink, a style of class and elegance you might think the world had long forgotten in today's ostentatious environment. We have seen the solid jewel-coloured dials and dial art over the last few years. But this year, we return to a much earlier version with a slight twist and refinement.
The brancard on each side of the case is now rounder, featuring sensual curves, as are the top and bottom of the case, which are rounded to complement the sides. The ivory, or off-white dial, is decorated with a flinqué pattern resembling the sunburst emanating from the centre. The updated black Roman numeral hour markers and a minute rail track run squarely below them, inspired by the early pieces. To complete the dial's aesthetic are the blued sword-shaped hour and minute hands, with a sapphire cabochon set on the crown. The wristwatch is powered by a manufacture automatic movement calibre 1899MC, and encased in a 38.1 mm x 27.75 mm case in yellow gold or rose gold, significantly larger than the pieces from the 1920s. While we mentioned that the differences are subtle but noticeable, the timepiece remains discreetly elegant.
Cartier Privé Tank à Guichets
Cartier may be the master of shape creation, but sometimes it can be quite cheeky. The Tank à Guichets was introduced in 1928, inspired by the ticket-till of the day. A window to show how much the ticket or tickets cost you have just purchased. Cartier transposed the idea onto the watch, where the time display is in digital format without the hands. Surely that must have made them inventors of time display and shapes. The watch comes in four variants – platinum, yellow gold, rose gold and white gold. The dial is in the precious metal plate. Still, it has a cut-out square window for the digital hours display in Arabic numerals at 11 o’clock for the platinum and 12 o’clock for the rest of them and a cut-out arched window displaying three minutes Arabic numerals at once with the centre being the time with an arrow tip indicator, it can be located at six o’clock for the yellow, red and white gold variants or between four and five o’clock for the platinum variant.
The platinum and white gold have the art deco-style Arabic hours and minutes in red transfers, while the yellow and red gold are in green transfers, a rather unique yet whimsically elegant choice. The crown is discreetly located at the top of the case. They are powered by a specifically designed jumping hours and dragging minutes time display developed in-house manufacture hand-wound calibre 9755 MC movement for this special timepiece. They certainly have that tongue-in-cheek attitude towards telling the time, and with the timeless appeal, even though the aesthetics are almost a hundred years old.
These timeless temptations are potent to classic and vintage fans and seductive to the new admirers. Even after a century, they never stop to amaze and wow us, even with the slightest tweak or just as they are.
