For many years, its search for novelties took Cartier in two directions. First was the highbrow complicated approach – you know the sort of thing: jour et nuit quantieme astronomique phases de lune tourbillon etc. The second route was the launch over the last decade of a series of “new classics”. As you might have forgotten them already, let me remind you of some of them: Calibre, Cle, Diver and Drive. They all had their good points and Drive genuinely had staying power in terms of simple, elegant, contemporary design, but in my opinion more care could have been taken with the name.
Valiant though these efforts were, they reminded me of the beef and hamburger gastronomic metaphor employed by Paul Newman when promoting uxorious behaviour. Although I would question the appropriateness of comparing my spouse to a cut of beef, it is a maxim that Cartier has recently been applying to its horological output – with spectacular results.
To use a vinous analogy (after all, Cartier is French) instead of nipping out to Majestic, Cartier has discovered that it has a cellar packed with Domaine De La Romanée-Conti, Angelus, Petrus and Le Pin. It brought back Panther, then it returned the Gordon Gekko-spec Wall Street-era Santos to the wrist and now it has revived another 1980s classic: the Cartier Pasha.
The Pasha made its debut in 1985 and it is worth bearing in mind that much else from that era belongs in a museum (personal portable music technology has developed somewhat since 1985, when Sony introduced the Discman). By contrast the Pasha appears to have been designed so well in 1985 that any major differences between the version launching today, which was announced at Watches & Wonders, and that of the era of radio pagers and Commodore computers are under the hood. We are encouraged to appreciate the similarities rather than seek out differences.
Now, as then, the design is founded on the tension between the traditional, Cartier straight-sided chemin de fer minute track and the polished circular bezel. The date window is still in the same place (bottom right hand corner of the chemin de fer) as are the large Arabic numerals at three, six, nine, and 12.
Further respectful nods to the past include such important design signifiers as the chained crown cover and the rounded faceting of the lugs.
Those who are old enough to remember the excitement it generated in rather less complicated times will recall that as well as being vintage Cartier it is also late era Rat Pack. In the last years of his life, Sammy Davis Jr was often seen wearing a Pasha, given to him by Frank Sinatra. As well as a great entertainer, Sammy was a man of immense style, who, like an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, chose to be accompanied into the afterlife by his favourite possessions and was buried wearing his jewellery, including, so it is said, his Pasha, for timekeeping in the next world. (However it has been suggested that he was exhumed and the valuables reclaimed when his widow discovered he had left her with a mountain of debt.)
If the Rat Pack provenance is not enough of an argument for purchase, there is also an element of Gérald Genta input to the Pasha story. While the greatest watch designer of the last century may not have been as intimately involved with the Pasha as he was with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus, his workshops did supply the complicated Pashas that joined the lineup, including a minute repeater and perpetual calendar.
Indeed, it could be argued that Cartier’s modern era forays into complicated watchmaking began with the Pasha, including one of the maddest complications ever devised by the mind of man – the Pasha Golf, a scoreboard on the wrist with a crown and push-piece total of six, eclipsing even the epic Omega Flightmaster, which fielded an already impressive five.
I am not a golfer, but I am prepared to take lessons if it will hasten the return of this push-piece porcupine.
From £5,700. Cartier.co.uk
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