HIGH SOCIETY
How Cartier has added elegant élan to the most august of British events, from a famous ball in 1930s Mayfair to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding
Clad in an exquisite black velvet gown, crowned with an ornate diamond-and-feathered headdress and with more brilliants blazing at her neck, décolletage, waist and wrist, Lady Diana Cooper was undoubtedly the belle of the ball. And this particular charity ball was an especially dazzling affair. Held on 26 November 1930, in the art deco splendour of the Park Lane Hotel, it was themed around ‘the Jewels of the Empire’. The cream of London society attended, alongside international luminaries of stage and screen; the highlight of the evening was a pageant of ‘living jewels’ – notable women dressed to represent the gems sourced from the territories of the British Empire. The actress Gertrude Lawrence was draped in multiple ropes of black pearls, the intrepid explorer Rosita Forbes glowed with rubies and Mrs AG McCorquodale, better known as Barbara Cartland, the prolific romantic novelist (and, later, step-grandmother to Diana, Princess of Wales) was in jade. ‘Much to our chagrin, Bridget [Poulett, another debutante and favourite model of Cecil Beaton] and I were told to wear coral and turquoise respectively – not diamonds and emeralds as we had hoped,’ complained Margaret Whigham, then the ‘deb of the year’, later the notorious Duchess of Argyll, whose divorce case in 1963, involving naked photographs of herself with a ‘headless man’, was a salacious society scandal.
The stars of this Pageant of Gems were photographed in their finery and featured across numerous publications including this one. Naturally, London’s top jewellers clamoured for the honour and publicity associated with dressing the guests; but it was to one particular house that the leading ladies that night turned for their finery.
Cartier had been integral to British high society ever since Edward VII pronounced it ‘the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers’, commissioning 27 tiaras from the maison for his 1902 coronation. Two years later, he granted the royal warrant that Cartier holds to this day – still the only foreign jewellery house to be so honoured.
Partly, Cartier’s popularity with the smart set was down to its inventive craftsmanship, made possible by the pioneering use of platinum. At a time when tiaras were de rigueur at court, the lightness and strength of the alloy enabled the brand to create uniquely delicate, near-invisible settings that allowed diamonds to shine in all their glory. (In her novel The Edwardians, published in the same year the Jewels of the Empire ball was held, Vita Sackville-West describes how a central character, Lucy, Duchess of Chevron, ‘had the family jewels reset by Cartier, preferring the fashions of the day to the heavy gold settings of Victoria’s time’.)
But the personality of Jacques Cartier, son of the founder, and the man who first brought the brand to London at the turn of the century, also had a vital role to play. ‘He was completely integrated in English society, a Frenchman who was an honorary Brit,’ says Laurent Feniou, Cartier’s suave managing director (who has himself maintained the man-about-town tradition). As well as having impeccable social credentials, M Cartier was highly attuned to changing fashions: he was, says Feniou, ‘the most elegant dandy you can imagine. All the tailors in Savile Row had orders from Jacques Cartier’.
Naturally, then, when the theme of the ball was suggested, the
haute monde made straight for his elegant Bond Street emporium. One of their number was the aforementioned Lady Diana Cooper, the Duke’s daughter hailed as the loveliest woman in the world and immortalised in fiction by writers ranging from Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford to DH Lawrence and Enid Bagnold. Appointed ‘leader of the Diamonds’, she was determined that she would not be outshone on the night; though Muriel Ashley, the Ball’s organiser and a Cartier client, ran her a close second. Representing ‘emerald’, she chose a theatrical headdress featuring a carved emerald of over 47 carats, sparkling in a central lyre-shaped motif studded with diamonds, and edged with more emerald cabochons. Then there was Gwen Mond, the artist and wife of the MP and businessman Henry Mond. This avant-garde couple had caused a sensation earlier in the year by commissioning an art deco drawing-room for their London house, including a striking overmantel sculpture, Scandal, by Charles Sargeant Jagger, that satirically referenced their own ménage-à-trois with the novelist Gilbert Cannan, and the gossips who condemned it. (‘The Hon Mrs Henry Mond, the daughter -in-law of Lord Melchett, is extremely artistic, and has a genuine flair for interior decoration,’ was The Illustrated London News’ coy acknowledgment in its coverage of the ball.) Personifying ‘Jade’, Mond borrowed another extraordinary tiara from Cartier, Egyptian in style, featuring twinkling cornucopias overflowing with jade fruit and surmounted by two reclining birds, which she teamed with a profusion of necklaces and armlets. If the decision to ask Mond to wear that stone in particular was meant as an oblique comment on her reputation, then she carried it off with magnificent aplomb…
Sixty detectives lined the ballroom to protect the guests and the gems, and the glamour and extravagance of this event set the seal on Cartier’s position at the heart of British society. Capitalising on its reputation, the brand subsequently booked a series of witty full-page advertisements in Bazaar, which ran between 1934 and 1935, showing elegant women enjoying the various delights of the Season – from court presentations to gambling at the casino – arrayed in its bijouterie. And later the same decade, Noël Coward (himself a loyal client and Cartier Tank watch aficionado) paid the brand the ultimate compliment of a reference in his song ‘I Went to a Marvellous Party’: ‘We knew the excitement was bound to begin/When Laura got blind on Dubonnet and gin/And scratched her veneer with a Cartier pin/ I couldn’t have liked it more…’
Today, while jewellery pageants may be a thing of the past, the mutual admiration continues. With its sponsorship of the Queen’s Cup polo and the Cartier Lawn at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed, the brand continues to embellish the Season; and it seemed entirely appropriate that the Duchess of Cambridge chose to wear the Cartier Halo tiara, crafted in 1936, on her wedding day. The jeweller of kings, yes, but even more the jeweller of queens.