After more than a century mastering its jewellery craft, Cartier knows it is often the aspects nobody sees, the clasps, hinges and closures, that make fine jewellery part of the wearer. Anyone who wears one of Cartier’s bracelets knows the pleasure of fastening the closure. Now that small satisfaction has moved from the wrist onto a new collection of tote bags. At the centre of Cartier’s new bag sits the faceted stud from its Clash jewellery collection, closing with a single twist, so that shutting the bag feels less like securing a handbag and more like putting on jewellery. The gesture lends the Clash de Cartier bag its name. Everything else in the design flows outward from it.
Marlin Yuson, the maison’s Creative Director of Accessories and Leather Goods, found her starting point in the humble envelope, borrowing its clean fold for a fastening that shapes the bag on either side of the handle. From there the bag becomes a study in how one object can live two lives. Worn open, it relaxes into something loose and easy, the bag you sling on, on the way out the door. Turn the stud and it draws itself up, tailored and deliberate, ready for the dinner that follows. Designed to be carried as a hand- held clutch, with straps in the hand or slung casually over the shoulder, how it’s worn is left entirely to the owner, and the occasion.
Each of the bags is crafted in Florence, where Cartier’s leather workshops source exceptionally fine hides, with a natural grain and a soft, tactile finish designed to gather patina over the years rather than resist it. The colours are a concise reflection of the maison’s palatte, black, caramel and Cartier burgundy, the Pantone shade the house claimed in the 1970s with Must de Cartier. Fifty years later, the same colour returns to carry a new idea, twisted shut and heading out into the world with poise and purpose.
