Return to Form

The Santos de Cartier rejoins the Cartier stable after a two-year hiatus. Terence Lim hops onto its comeback trail to find out more

ack in 2016, cartier made the call to stop the production of the Santos de Cartier collection, much to the disbelief of the watch cognoscenti. A household name, the watch was first designed by Louis Cartier in 1904 for his friend and celebrity pilot Alberto Santos-dumont (pictured above), who had lamented that checking his pocket watch while flying was troublesome. Louis Cartier strapped a timekeeping mechanism onto a tiny leather belt, and thus the Santos de Cartier was born. In the ensuing century, the collection attracted legions of fans with its signature square frame, strong lines and beautiful curves. Famous faces including actors Timothy Dalton and Tom Cruise, reality star Kourtney Kardashian and rock and roll legend Mick Jagger have sported the horological icon, and it has even made cameo appearances in Hollywood productions such as Wall Street (1987) and The Love Guru (2008). And so when Cartier decided to bring back this iconic collection at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) fair in January, people were pleased. The Parisian maison released an updated version of the iconic watch, which now comes in two sizes—medium and large—and in various materials with different strap options. Purists can still opt for the leather strap version similar to the original one made for Santos-dumont, while the ones with the metal bracelet, being more practical and long-wearing, are better suited for daily wear. At the top of the pyramid is the Santos de Cartier Skeleton watch, a manual-winding, open-worked and large-sized ticker, available in either pink gold or stainless steel. The rerelease of the Santos de Cartier follows the strategy the marque employed with the Panthère de Cartier collection launched last year. The French giant revived the discontinued watch collection with a