Cartier’s London Crash slams back into town

For half a century the Cartier Crash was the watch that few people knew, and even fewer people wore. And then, in 2018, aged 51, it appeared on Kanye’s wrist (back then he was better known as an entertainer than a pro-life, professional provocateur). Today the Dalí-look timepiece counts Tyler, the Creator, Jay-Z and Kris Jenner among its celebrity advocates and last year a London Crash from the late ’60s topped $1.5mn at auction. Now the Crash returns to its Bond Street birthplace, where it will be available in that most prestigious of metals – platinum – completing the model’s journey from quirky cult to global grail.

Cartier Platinum Crash, £43,000

In her history of Cartier, Francesca Cartier Brickell believes that, in the time of her grandfather Jean Jacques, “Cartier London created only about a dozen Crash watches”. Conceived by designer Rupert Emmerson, each one was handmade, each dial handpainted. For years it was generally accepted that the Crash was inspired by another Swinging ’60s classic, the Maxi Oval, which had been in a car crash: a story that is either apocryphal, or in extremely bad taste. More likely it was a product of its psychedelic times. “Mr Emmerson was a great designer and I think there was a little bit of Salvador Dalí in the Crash,” the late Dennis Gardner, a veteran designer at Cartier London, once explained to me. “Mr Cartier would not make it at first. He said it was too Carnaby Street.”

Mr Cartier would not make it at first. He said it was too Carnaby Street

Although the watch was never made in quantity, one or two examples continued to dribble out of the workshops during the late ’60s, ’70s, and even, for very special clients, into the ’80s. In 1991 the brand issued a run of 400 Crash watches, made in Paris. Thereafter the Crash occasionally resurfaced in various guises: for instance, gem-set on a metal bracelet (2013) or skeletonised (2015).

The reopening of the Bond Street boutique in 2019 provided the perfect excuse to make a very small number of yellow-gold Crashes for London. “It was a chance to return as closely as possible to the pure design of the original,” says Cartier’s UK managing director Laurent Feniou. “What I did not expect was the extraordinary demand, from all over the world. Within 24 hours we had to stop taking new orders.” Total production is not disclosed but is said to have been five or six dozen, leaving many who had not been able to get on the waiting list disappointed.

Happily, lurking deep in the archives there is a precedent that permits Cartier to make another contemporary but truly London Crash: according to Cartier’s order books, there is an even smaller number of platinum London Crashes out there. And the new platinum version is drop-dead gorgeous. However, even though the word Paris has disappeared and “Swiss Made” has been discreetly tucked into the bottom of the dial, it is missing the word that would make it perfect: “London”. I don’t suppose there is any chance of another limited series, is there?