A new lease of life for a century-old watchmaking icon, the Cartier Santos
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A new charter of life for a century-old watchmaking icon, the Cartier Santos
At 115 years young, Cartier's Santos gets a refresh with the new Santos-Dumont and Santos de Cartier collections, the former aimed at dressy gents while the latter trained on more audacious types.
(Photo: Cartier)
24 Jul 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 06:04PM)
When your annal is as all-encompassing every bit Cartier'south, you don't take to look far for inspiration – but deep. And that's exactly what the watchmaker-jeweller has done this year with the Santos, which has a history of over a century.
Already a much-dear icon of the Parisian powerhouse, and a colonnade collection in its stable of watches, the Santos received an update in the Santos-Dumont and Santos de Cartier lines.
For the uninitiated, the Santos takes its proper noun from Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, for whom the original timepiece was created in 1904. Fitted with a leather strap to allow Santos-Dumont easily-gratis telling of fourth dimension, the spotter went downwards in history equally being i of the commencement, if not the first, wristwatch for men. This, y'all'll recall, was an era when pocket watches still ruled.
Harking back to the finesse of the early 20th century, the new Cartier Santos-Dumont sports an elegantly gaunt instance (just 7mm high) in all-gold, steel and gold, or all-steel. Enabling this svelteness is the use of a new in-house quartz motility. What'due south even better is that this high-operation, free energy-efficient engine has a battery built to last vi years – twice as long as regular batteries.
Design-wise, the bezel with its distinctive screws – a design element institute on the 1904 original – makes a triumphant comeback afterwards years of absence. To farther modernise the watch, Cartier stretched out the Roman numerals on the dial, giving it a sleek, elongated profile.
If the Santos-Dumont is the dapper dresser, then the Santos de Cartier is its spunkier, swaggering cousin with more pronounced lines and a sportier overall artful. Several variations are available (xanthous gold, pink aureate, steel, steel-and-aureate), although the model with the bluish punch (available only in steel) stands out from the pack. The lustre emanating from the radial sunburst gradient dial is a sight for sore eyes.
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The chronograph model is another stand-out, not least considering of the left-hand positioning of the start/finish button (the reset function is integrated in the crown) that makes it easier to operate the stopwatch using the thumb. This is thanks to the utilize of a new in-business firm movement, 1904-CH MC, which has a column-wheel construction with vertical clutch, features typical of high-cease chronograph movements. With this development, it's clear that Cartier is ending its reliance on ETA movements.
If a industry movement isn't enough of a technical feat for you lot, there'southward also the skeleton model. This series features a stripped-downwardly, blank-bones aesthetic that reveals the watches' beating hearts: Meticulously finished manual-winding movements.
What we appreciate most, nonetheless, are the QuickSwitch mechanism and EasyLink systems that are available on the Santos de Cartier collections. Introduced in 2018, QuickSwitch makes it a sure-fire to remove the bracelet without any tools, so you can swop between leather straps and metal bracelets depending on the occasion, the weather, and, well, your mood. The EasyLink arrangement, meanwhile, lets you add or remove links with the unproblematic push button of a push button on the underside of each link, making for easy adjustment of the bracelet length.
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