The Cartier Santos Invented The “Cool” Watch
A very brief history of some Cartier Santos iterations and why the model is surging again in popularity.
You’ve heard the name Cartier. It’s synonymous with luxury jewelry, and even if you’re not anywhere near that world, you know the name — whether hearing it in a Tyler, The Creator song, seeing it on Kanye’s wrist, or, you know, any other piece of popular media. But one Cartier watch in particular has both a legendary past and a bright future: The Santos.
Before we go any further, if you don’t already know, the Cartier Santos was the first men’s wristwatch. THE first. Back in 1904, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brazilian pilot and friend of Louis Cartier, complained that using a pocket watch during a flight sucked. So Louis made the original Cartier men’s wristwatch, now considered the Santos Dumont, for him. It’s a famous and often-repeated story, and our friend Tony Traina at Rescapement covers the early history of the Santos in far greater detail than we will — check out his piece here.
The Santos de Cartier
One of the main Cartier watches we’re talking about now came around over 70 years later. When Dominique Perrin was appointed as Marketing Manager of Cartier in 1978, he was tasked with bringing Cartier to a wider audience. As a response to the success of Gerald Genta’s all-steel Royal Oak and Nautilus (for Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe respectively), Perrin had the idea to bring the luxury steel sports watch to younger people by updating the design and making it slightly more affordable. Or rather, by making it “cool”.
Cartier relaunched the original Santos as the Santos de Cartier: doing the watch in stainless steel with gold accents, adding a stainless steel bracelet, and bulking up the now instantly-recognizable riveted square bezel. It’s a clean re-hash that has a strong sense of the historical Santos DNA while also being very of-the-era, a steely luxury sports watch that embodies the sensibilities of the early 1970s.
The new, younger Santos in two-tone is a somewhat paradoxical blend of highly dated design and oddly timeless appeal: one of the reasons it remains as alluring a watch today is its masterful execution of a very-70s bi-metal look. It’s among the true originals.
The Santos Galbée
Later in 1987, the Santos was subject to a gentler revision — this time with curvaceous and sloping updates, and again a paradoxical design: while being updated to a design that was not very of-the-era, it somehow looks more like a watch you can place directly in the 80s. This was and still can feel like the banker’s watch, though those sentiments are slowly changing.
Despite being truly younger and holding a nearly identical silhouette, the Galbée era of the Santos has a less youthful design, perhaps just because of what we associate with it. Still, its appeal is growing in the eyes of many collectors, and maybe its symbolism is being overturned now for more modern, post-corporate sensibilities.
Why does it still work now?
The Santos was a cool watch in 1904. The actual first pilot’s watch. And it was reinvented to be cool — one of the few commercial items created to be cool that actually initially succeeded. Now it’s somehow still cool — not only with its vintage models flying upwards in value and collectability, but also with its modern reinterpretations being received extremely well.
Somehow, the design of the Cartier Santos has arguably changed less than other iconic designs like the Rolex Submariner, and it’s a much longer-running design — 117 years, next to a measly 68 for the Sub. Yet somehow, it’s still alluring as a design, still worthy of its growing price tag.
It almost shouldn’t be, but it is — it’s still cool. And that’s pretty cool.
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