CROCODILE ROCKS
Nearly 50 years ago Cartier created an iconic necklace for Mexican screen legend María Félix. Now it’s launching an exquisite collection inspired by the necklace and glowing with Colombia’s best emeralds
She was celebrated as the greatest Latina actress of her age, her beauty, glamour and talent legendary throughout the Spanish-speaking world. While María Félix, the most successful Mexican movie star of the 20th century, did not act in Englishlanguage films, she was as loved across Europe and South America as contemporaries Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.
Born in 1914, she played larger-than-life characters that were the focal point of every film she starred in. Her fashion sense was also unparalleled, and she became an arbiter of style and beauty around the Latin world.
Such was her style and prominence that Cartier created a necklace for Félix in 1975, a stunning adornment that became one of its most admired pieces of jewellery. A unique creation made of two fully articulated crocodiles, one paved with emeralds and the other with yellow diamonds, it remains an extraordinarily striking masterpiece today.
Now, more than 40 years later and inspired by that necklace, Cartier has created an exceptional high jewellery parure with a rare ensemble of 14 emeralds from Colombia. The necklace is remarkably similar to the original, no doubt because the same artisan behind the Félix design was involved in the creation of the new jewellery set.
The Colombian emeralds, totalling 46.45 carats, are remarkably consistent in quality, colour and shape. Their magnetic allure is enhanced by a series of emerald beads in the same intense shade of green. These are entwined around the necklace and clasped dramatically in the mouth of the crocodile. Anyone familiar with the wildlife of Africa or Australia will remark on how lifelike the reptile is. Its legs and tail look as if the crocodile is ready to pounce, and its emerald eyes gleam upward in a protective yet predatory way. Cartier created a new series of crocodile ring, earrings and bracelet to go with the necklace. The design of the four pieces that make up this collection is true to Cartier’s tradition of naturalism. Each piece has a ripple of ridges on the reptile’s back and a stretched-out tail set with diamonds. The designs can be wrapped around the neck, the wrist or the finger, or be suspended as a pair of pendant earrings. The animal’s legs, like its scales, have been specially designed to feel comfortable against the skin. To illustrate how intricate this design is, 1,875 hours of painstaking handcrafting went into making the necklace, and 1,019 for the bracelet. It is this level of craftsmanship that Cartier is famous for—and the reason the original necklace has travelled the world to appear in global jewellery exhibitions as an example of European design talent at its peak. The parure is the latest creation in a long tradition at Cartier of high jewellery based on one of its iconic themes, the menagerie. Cartier is famous for its high jewellery pieces, but this collection is particularly rare, made as it is from Colombia’s most exquisite emeralds and fashioned into an iconic design. The woman lucky enough to own one of these exceptional pieces will not only have a little piece of history in her jewellery box, she will be following in the footsteps of Mexican cinema’s most loved actress.