Your Shopping Bag
Your bag is currently empty.
Add a Gift Note
Adding a personal touch to your gift is easy! At checkout, enter the recipient's info in the shipping address section and we’ll include this note in the order.
Receive 5% Off Your First Order. Now Shipping to India.
Receive 5% Off Your First Order. Now Shipping to India.
Receive 5% Off Your First Order. Now Shipping to India.
Receive 5% Off Your First Order. Now Shipping to India.
Adding a personal touch to your gift is easy! At checkout, enter the recipient's info in the shipping address section and we’ll include this note in the order.
There have been few watch brands that have shot to the top of sales charts and wishlists faster than Cartier has done in the past decade. The jewel in Richemont’s crown, Cartier has some of the most iconic and recognizable watches ever produced. Just think about it: there is the Santos, the Tank, the Crash, the Panthère, etc… and each with several sub-collections. And before anyone can begin by saying, “it’s a jewelry brand,” we’ll have to stop and remind you that the Santos de Cartier was indeed the first men’s wristwatch, back in 1904. With that settled, we asked the editorial team here at Teddy to pick their favorite watches by Cartier and the results were just as diverse and varying as you’d expect. And, as usual, make sure to share your favorite Cartier watch in the comments.
What else could it be? My first and only Cartier is the Santos-Dumont XL W2SA0025, a dressy watch that was released back in 2021 and captured my heart due to its use of Arabic numerals. If you know me, you know that I have a bias against Roman numerals for my personal watches but that’s not the only thing this Santos-Dumont has going for it. The warm copper/salmon guilloché dial is matched with the rarely used red font and the elements come together to create a two-tone showstopper.
I’d be remiss to not mention the vintage Cartier Reverso, an example of which I saw almost five years ago when the late Cartier expert Harry Fane came to Los Angeles. Harry’s death was a loss for the community because there couldn’t have been a kinder person and more knowledgable vintage Cartier expert out there. One of the watches he showed me was this two-tone Cartier Reverso from 1947. A predecessor to the more modern Basculante, the Reverso actually made a lot of sense considering Jaeger-LeCoultre produced all of Cartier’s movements back in the day.
The Cartier Tortue stands out as unique, even within Cartier's history of wholly distinct timepieces. The Tortue design made its debut in 1912, a full five years before the famous Tank premiered. The organic shape of the Tortue case fell somewhere between the existing Santos-Dumont and the soon-to-be Tank, with a gentle bulge that wasn’t quite circle, but not quite square. Eventually, the Tortue would go on to accept all manner of exotic complications, and the base design showcased a seemingly endless level of versatility. Unsurprisingly, the design holds up just as well today, over a century later, and serves as a perfect showcase for the brand’s contemporary mechanical innovations, such as the recently released Monopusher Chronograph. It’s delicate and subtle while hitting all the right notes for a big personality, and to me, it’s the most compelling platform created by Cartier.
When I was putting together the outline for what would become my 2021 book, AIR TIME: Watches Inspired by Aviation, Aeronautics, and Pilots, I hit upon the idea of interweaving the stories of every iconic pilot watch with the evolving history of aviation itself. When the concept solidified, it became obvious where I would need to start: with the Brazilian-born French bon vivant, balloonist, and early aircraft inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont, and the historic wristwatch made for him (and named for him) by his friend, visionary jeweler and watch designer Louis Cartier.
Few watch aficionados think of Cartier when they think of pilot watches, and the Santos-Dumont watch — also famous for another bit of historical trivia, as the first commercial wristwatch made for male wearers — looks nothing like any pilot watch seen today. But the Santos’ epochal, indispensable role in the development of aviation-centric timekeepers has always made it fascinating to me, in all of its various incarnations in the century-plus since its invention. Curiously, however, while acknowledging the broad strokes of the Santos-Dumont origin story, Cartier had for many years not really leaned into that history in its marketing and promotion for the watch. (Perhaps, the brand figured, it was best not to delve too much into Alberto Santos-Dumont’s own life story, which ended in tragedy when he died by suicide at age 59; by some accounts he was despondent that the airplanes he loved were being used for warfare — a rather stunning fact that I discovered for the first time in my research.)
In 2023, however, Cartier released a special, skeletonized version of the Santos-Dumont that paid a direct and visually arresting tribute to the watch’s aviation origins — and specifically to the historical accomplishments of its eponym — by means of a dial-side micro-rotor, elegantly sculpted to resemble a vintage aircraft invented by Santos-Dumont himself. The watch’s classic design codes, established way back in 1904, are all present: visible screws on the softly squared bezel, sword hands for hours and minutes, a beaded crown with a blue cabochon. The aforementioned microrotor, which winds the watch’s exclusively made movement, Caliber 9629MC, features a miniature relief engraving of the Demoiselle, an early airplane that Santos-Dumont invented in 1907, flying over a globe. The Santos-Dumont Skeleton Micro-Rotor still looks nothing like a pilot’s watch — especially with the openworked and not even particularly legible dial design — but it’s the bold juxtaposition of avant-garde and historical elements that make it my favorite Cartier watch in years.
For myself, as I’m sure is true of many other women in the watch space, Cartier’s Panthère was among the first watches I took notice of. It was something of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon – once I clocked it, I began to see it everywhere, from the pop culture and celebrity world to dangling just so from the wrists of my fellow NYC compatriots. Over the years, the Panthère has become something of a ubiquitous calling card as the preferred watch of “It Girls” everywhere.
The Panther has been a motif used throughout Cartier’s world-building since the early 20th century and can be traced back to one woman – Jeanne Toussaint, nicknamed “The Panther” – who joined Cartier in 1917 and acted as the head of the fine jewelry department. Fast forward to 1983, when the aftershocks of the Quartz Crisis were still pummeling watchmakers everywhere, Cartier unleashed the Panthère in watch form into the world, equipped with a high-accuracy quartz movement, thus embracing the shifting demands of the time. Still, in the brand’s contemporary Panthère collection, you won’t find a mechanical movement in sight.
With its square case, time-only functionality, and matching bracelet, there’s something in the simplicity of the Panthère that always draws me back in – quartz movement be damned. My personal favorite will always be the small two-tone model. Or any two-tone model, really.
Cartier is the watchmaker that put me in my place. When I first started working in watches, I thought Cartier was just a jewelry brand capitalizing on their brand name to sell some watches on the side. Obviously, I was very wrong. The story of Alberto Santos-Dumont totally won me over and showed me just how wrong I was. A few years later, my first luxury watch was a proper two-tone Santos, and I’ve been a fanboy ever since.
Cut to 2022 and the maison releases one of the coolest watches I’ve ever seen: the Masse Mystérieuse. If you are unaware, Cartier has a history of producing what it calls Mystery Clocks, which are exactly what they sound like. Clocks whose mechanical workings are visibly a mystery, often completely transparent with no easily discernible logic for how the clock functions. These watches tend to have floating hands, transparent dials, and highly skeletonized movements. The Masse Mystérieuse turns this up to 11 by bucking Cartier's own trend of a hidden movement and putting on full display the timekeeping mechanism. However in this case, not only is the "mystery watch" an automatic; the entire movement is the oscillating weight. If you ever needed proof of Cartier’s watchmaking prowess, look no further — and look right through.
Image courtesy of Christie's
Cartier as a concept is something I don’t often contemplate. Sure, the Tank is an actual icon, and one of the most copied designs in watchmaking. Would I wear one? Absolutely. Me and most of the watch-wearing public, that is, so I need to look a little further afield for this assignment. I first thought about some of the lesser-hyped Cartier models, like the Ronde, but it seems a bit pedestrian for a brand known for uncommon case shapes. The Crash, while quite distinctive, has reached critical mass in the hype department, so that’s a hard no from me. Then it dawned on me: the most un-Cartier Cartier I could think of presented itself as the perfect pick for my inner contrarian. It’s one of the most divisive watches the brand has ever produced, eliciting turned-up noses amongst those of wealth and taste. In other words, it’s perfect for me. Of course, I’m talking about the Calibre de Cartier. And not just any Calibre de Cartier, but the Diver. In black.
In my continued effort to avoid the clichés of watch collecting, I’ve become low-key obsessed with tool watches from haute couture houses. The dichotomy of high fashion and getting one’s hands (or watch) dirty fascinates me, and the stylish set are far more likely to be unencumbered by the bounds of tradition and conservatism that so often accompany the boldfaced names of the watch industry. These outliers are decidedly unpopular compared to their catalog mainstays, but they have captured my imagination, and that’s how models like the Chanel J12 Marine, the Dior Chiffre Rouge D02 dive watch, and the Bulgari Diagono Scuba made it onto my wishlist. And like those, the Calibre de Cartier Diver Carbon is a highly capable tool watch, from one of the places you’d least expect to find it.
Image courtesy of Christie's
This 300-meter, ISO-certified beast is the most anti-Cartier Cartier I can recall, but make no mistake, it’s every bit a finely-crafted piece of Swiss timekeeping. Inside is the 1904-PS MC caliber, the brand’s first mass-produced in-house movement in its history. The black DLC case is surprisingly slim for a real-deal diver, at just under 11mm. And despite its baked-in toughness, there are classic Cartier touches everywhere, including Roman numerals on the dial, and a blue spinel cabochon on the screw-down crown. I just love how it flies in the face of tradition, gatecrashing the party normally populated by revered dive watch classics from names like Rolex and Omega. Traditionalists may scoff in disapproval, and you know what? The thought of that makes me love this unsung Cartier even more.
Official Authorized Dealer of over 40+ leading luxury brands.
Dedicated customer service staff ready to resolve any purchase or product issues.
Swift delivery directly from our fulfillment center, no product sourcing or un-stocked consignment.
We work with leading luxury brands to provide the best selection for discerning collectors.
We just redirected you to the best site experience based on your location. If you still want to go to the previous country, you can select it in the international menu.
Start the Conversation