ERIC BOMAN
DECEMBER 2017 97Karachi have meetings later that day to discuss the 2020
collection). Karachi’s career at Cartier spans over three
decades; she remembers herself being a young jewellery
designer learning from the elders, the role she fulfils today.
“Now it is my job to transmit Cartier to the younger
generations of designers. Cartier is a vocabulary, and when
you know the vocabulary you can speak the language. And
this is an alive language; it is constantly evolving,” she says.
Adds Carrez: “Every year we enrich Cartier with a new
vocabulary but with a consistency of Cartier style.”
“Imagination and designing is not difficult, but to make
itinto reality? That is when it is difficult,” says Karachi with
asmile. From the sketches, designs are created in resin form
before precious metals are used, then stones – “because high
jewellery is one-of-a-kind, there is no prototype – you have to
be sure!” Take a necklace with a single rubellite stone of 91.15
carats. When the necklace is turned over, you’ll discover that
the back of the rubellite stone is covered by a metal mesh in
which diamonds are arranged like pixels, allowing the
necklace to be worn on both sides. “The mesh looks like lace,
and rubellite,” as Karachi points out, the r of the stone rolled
and reverberated in her French-ified English – rrrrrubellite,
“is transparent, so the mesh invigorates the stone.”
Résonances, as Karachi explains of the collection’s name,
means “the feeling we get from the stone”, with the shape
and the colours rippling from the stone. The theme is
discussed within Cartier “even before we pick up a pencil,
because it needs to be sufficiently inspiring for the
designers but also have the capacity to open doors to new
directions”, says Rainero, who passionately shares his
mastery of Cartier’s history. “Résonances lets us look at
stones as a source of inspiration; how the design should
resonate with the strength and originality of each stone.
The stone is the centre of innovation.”
A ring with a cabochon-cut sapphire is offset with
graduated raw emeralds alongside, as if the shape of the
32.35 carat sapphire is vibrating down the side of the
finger. The ruby in the ring, as pictured here within a
lobster claw, is enhanced with Cartier’s signature panther
coiled around. A favourite of Karachi’s is a bracelet with a
‘watermelon’ tourmaline of 84.10 carats. Found in Zambia,
the stone has the rare quality of having two distinct colours
within the one stone. “We wanted to amplify the colour,
because the colour beats are like a heartbeat,” she gestures
to the bracelet, which includes baguette-cut coloured
sapphires, and brown, light orange and white brilliant-cut
diamonds down the length of the bracelet echoing the
colours of the main stone. Rainero singles out a geometric
diamond creation called the Twisting Light bracelet, which
has an obvious influence from modern architecture, but is
significant in Cartier’s legacy for the way the rock crystals
are angled to enhance the light hitting the diamond.
The Chandigarh necklace with flowers (see previous
pages), is designed around a 12.07 carat carved ruby,
withother carved emeralds, rubies and brilliant-cut
diamonds placed around the centrepiece, like a floral
arrangement waiting to be worn. It is part of Cartier’s
patented ‘Tutti Frutti’ style, first commissioned by heiressDaisy Fellowes in the 1936 and drawing from colourful and floral traditional Indian
jewellery. Earlier designs were thick and heavy with the mass of stones, but
nowadays the deftness is to make them as light and easy to wear as possible.
There is a recognisable Cartier style that is difficult to articulate. “Cartier is very
particular, because you have one singular vision expressed in so many different
fields,” Rainero explains, listing abstract and figurative designs, colourful and
monochromatic, as all co-existing. “There is a common vision of beauty linked with
balance, and a search of purity but also an idea of extravagance.”
Extravagance, like how later that evening the Cartier black-tie gala to unveil
Résonances at Governor’s Island in New York would have guests water-taxiing to
the secret venue while sipping from miniature bottles of Cartier champagne. Guests
included Carey Mulligan, who wore a velvet Dior haute couture gown to offset her
Résonances necklace, and performances featured songs from Andra Day and Jon
Batiste’s mesmerising piano playing. “I’m wearing millions of dollars of diamonds,
I’m told,” mused Nicole Warne, waving her hands towards her ears and her neckline.
With Cartier’s exhibition at Canberra’s National Gallery opening in March 2018,
the question arises of how these current designs will be viewed in the future. “Today,
people love to wear art deco pieces, and as a designer I would love if people inthe
future wanted to wear pieces from the period we are working on now in the same
way,” says Karachi. Like the story of the Taylor-Burton diamond (today it is in a
private collection), historically significant pieces like the updated Tutti Frutti
necklace or the bracelet of scales will be passed down time and time again. Think
ofwhat tales these jewels would one day tell. ■