Vogue Australia — December 2017

94

had caught wind of a particular Cartier bracelet made of multiple

miniature scales, each encrusted with brilliant-cut diamonds on one

side and potent blue lapis lazuli on the other. It sounded like a

jewellery design from mythology – the scales could be flipped this way or

that, alternating the colour of the bracelet. A diamond or a lapis lazuli day

• take your pick! Where could it be viewed? “Sold,” came the response
  from a Cartier representative in the Fifth Avenue, New York, store, and
  never to be re-made. The combination of inventive design and the rarity of
  the stones ensured that exclusivity and uniqueness can indeed be bought.
  “Since the beginning of jewellery, women have needed different ways
  to wear it. Because the pieces are a representation of a bigger investment,
  you would like to have as many opportunities as possible to wear
  them,” explains Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s knowledgeable image, style
  and heritage director, in one of the many private rooms of the Cartier
  mansion in New York, where the Cartier team is unveiling the high
  jewellery collection Résonances de Cartier. “And they are technically
  difficult and, of course, there is the cost.” Because even with sky-high
  jewellery budgets (the kind that are whispered rather than writ),
  wearability remains the utmost matter of interest.

I

Cartier unveils its latest high jewellery

collection, one that the famed house

hopes will resonate for decades, if not

centuries, to come. By Zara Wong.

Terms of

adornment

JEWELLERY

PHOTOGRAPHS ERIC BOMAN

VOGUE VIEWPOINT

We are in the same store – nix that, mansion – that once exhibited the

Taylor-Burton diamond of 69 carats. Thousands of people lined up to see

the diamond, Arnaud Carrez, Cartier’s international marketing and

communication director, tells me over a morning espresso. The diamond’s

previous owner, Harriet Annenberg Ames, never felt comfortable wearing

it as a ring, and had put it up for auction: Cartier outbid Richard Burton at

a record-breaking $1 million. Burton ended up buying the diamond from

Cartier for Elizabeth Taylor, hence the name. Citing wearability – even

Taylor knew her limits – she had the diamond re-designed as a necklace

by Cartier. “It has so many carats, it’s almost a turnip,” Burton had

commented on the diamond when he had finally acquired it.

Fine jewellery, by virtue of practicalities, has always been about the

long game. Patience in waiting for the right stone, and patience as

significant pieces are passed from one owner to another through

inheritance or through private purchases as unofficial markers of

shifting fortunes. Jacqueline Karachi, creative director of Cartier’s high

jewellery, shows me sketches of the designs for Résonances, which has

been in the works for two years. Longer, if you include the time it takes

to collect landmark stones from around the world (Rainero and →