DIAMOND STANDARD
The legacies of Cartier and Vogue Australia may stretch across time and oceans, but an instinct for identifying women of distinction tethers the magazine to the French maison.
The legacies of Cartier and Vogue Australia may stretch across time and oceans, but an instinct for identifying women of distinction tethers the magazine to the French maison.
IN 1936, LEGENDARY costume designer and photographer Cecil Beaton captured Wallis Simpson in the pages of UK Vogue. Given the American-born socialite had thrown the monarchy into tumult when she captured the heart of Prince Edward VIII, who subsequently abdicated the throne, hers was a controversial choice of subject for a publication made for the British public. But the Duchess of Windsor, in an outtake from Beaton’s shoot, appears unfazed by any uproar. Instead, she stares into the lens with a palpable confidence, the palms of her hands raised skyward as if to beg the question: had we noticed the Cartier bracelet wrapped delicately around her wrist?
The bracelet, which features a diamond chain intricately woven around nine jewelled crosses, was a gift from Simpson’s husband in 1934 and a visual pointer to Cartier and Vogue’s similarities. See a Cartier brooch on the cover of Vogue in 1955 lensed by Erwin Blumenfeld. A Vogue image of Elizabeth Taylor captured by Lord Snowdon in 1971 – her Cartier 69.42-carat Taylor-Burton diamond
gleaming in the light – exemplifies both the maison and the magazine’s interest in keeping their proverbial ears to the ground, and to the intersection of culture, style and screen.
Founded in Paris in 1847 by Louis-François Cartier, the French maison won Prince Edward VIII’s admiration and serviced his jewellery needs over the years. Not only the preferred jeweller for the Prince buying gifts for his wife, Cartier was also where the Duchess of Windsor ordered gifts for her husband, including an onyx pocket watch inscribed with the date it was given: ‘Easter 12/4/36’. This tradition of gifting extended to a coterie of royal and celebrity clients and pre-eminent fashion names, as lifting the lids of elite jewellery boxes throughout history would show.
Princess Diana and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were often photographed with their Cartier Tank watches on wrists, while Australian-born Princess Mary of Denmark is wont to wear a Cartier Love bracelet during public outings. The maison also has a long record of loaning pieces to clients, including Dame Nellie Melba, one of Australia’s most famous operatic sopranos and friend of Pierre Cartier. Melba’s borrowed Belle Epoque necklace debuted at the Royal Albert Hall where she performed for Edward VII’s 1902 coronation.
The enduring fascination of a woman of substance, her clothes and accessories might best be seen in its lasting value. Simpson’s pieces, one being a Panthère bracelet gifted in 1952 and imagined by Jeanne Toussaint – Cartier’s first- ever female director, who helmed the jewellery department from 1933 to 1970 – and her brooches, such as the Flamingo version, sold as part of her jewellery collection for £4.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2010. And that’s not to speak of the collection’s sentimental and cultural worth. Even back when it was purchased, the Duke had prophesied the maison’s unique ability to transcend time and hold pride of place in the global imagination as the ultimate arbiter of taste. Cartier, the Duke is believed to have said, was the “jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers”. Even if his statement was said off the cuff at the time, it has resonated through the decades.
In 1959, Vogue launched its Australian edition and in 1975, the Les Must de Cartier boutique at David Jones in Sydney was unveiled. The arrival of these entities signalled a bolstering of Australia’s luxury profile and consolidated Cartier’s local ties. As the jewellery house, headquartered in Rue de la Paix in Paris, introduced the first-ever international jewellery maison to the hitherto remote land down under, the addition of Vogue’s presence might have alerted internationals to Australia as one of fashion’s newest frontiers. The confluence of Vogue and Cartier firmly placed Australia on the style map, sparking curiosity amid the industry cognoscenti. It was this renewed spotlight on Australia that repositioned the country in the global consciousness as a destination worth travelling to. This was evidenced in the delivery of rare Cartier pieces to our shores many years later as part of the National Gallery of Australia’s 2018 showcase Cartier: The Exhibition, which saw more than 200,000 visitors descend on the nation’s capital to catch a glimpse of Vogue cover girl Grace Kelly’s 10.48-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring.
It is only fitting then, that Vogue Australia marks its 60th year – a diamond anniversary no less – with one of the country’s most successful exports, Nicole Kidman, celebrating the milestone by wearing showpieces worthy of the moment on our cover. With its name derived from Greek mythology and a design based upon a pair of brooches created by the maison in 1903, the Dioscures set from Cartier’s high jewellery Magnitude collection features pear-shaped white diamonds in a swan-neck setting and draped to resemble foliage, cascading from the neck in a signature Cartier style. These strands pool at two robustly sized diamonds – one 26.35 carats, the other 26.37 – which can be removed and affixed to the earrings, also worn by Kidman. The image is just one of the actor’s multiple Vogue Australia covers (January 2017 was her most recent) and memorable moments on the red carpet in Cartier, including a 2012 Cannes Film Festival appearance where the actor wore vintage 1923 Cartier earrings with two bracelets: a 1926 baguette and 1929 diamond bracelet.
Our celebratory cover, a meeting of three stories – an acclaimed actor, an international publication and a storied French jewellery house – calls to mind the colourful past and future focus of the jewellery house and global publication.
Royal scandals may come and go, but a woman in Cartier, captured by the right photographer with the light hitting just so, lingers in the visual memory long after the page is turned.
The confluence of Vogue and Cartier firmly placed Australia on the style map, sparking curiosity