Pasha keeps providing historic returns. The round-shaped watch Cartier had relaunched in 2020 is about to welcome a much expected variation, a throwback to a time when the Pasha Grille had opened up the brand and the model to a new era of sportiness and playfulness. The Grille is back and it's removable, as it should be. This move paves the way for an abundance of mutations.
The Cartier Privé collection counts a new Cartier recreation in its midst. This year, it's the Tank Chinoise's turn to be updated. Its case is made of two transversal and curved sides are positioned on top of two vertical ones, which is lean and clean. Sun-brushed dials, pared-down outlines, the Tank spirit reigns over this timepiece, until the new departure begins, with black lacquer on the beams, an openworked movement with red and black lacquer inserts, a Chinese temple feel, Cartier Privé is a a place of creativity, not just history, and it is certainly not stuck in the past.
The new Coussin de Cartier collection has two faces. One has a cushion-shaped square case with rounded edges, and a spiral gem-setting pattern that covers the entire case and bezel in a whirlwind of colors. The other is tactual, sensual, surprising and gamesome. Cartier inserted a three-dimensional, flexile structure inside a gold mesh case that feels literally soft. That's a hint to the languid design vocabulary of such pieces as the Divan, or the flexibility of shapes of the Crash or Salvador Dali's melting watch.
Masse Mystérieuse is the much awaited come-back of Cartier's Haute Horlogerie, a specialty where new movements and concepts had been all but abandoned of late. In the wake of such historical models as the Rotonde Astromystérieux, this 43.5-mm platinum piece features a movement that fully and freely rotates, like a rotor. It's swinging in there, on its own, seemingly disconnected from everything in a void of transparent sapphire. Very mobile, very silent, very spectacular, it shows that when Cartier means it, they know what creativity in watchmaking looks like.
