Watch Purists Called It Jewellery, Now It’s The Hottest Brand in 2025

• Watch purists refused to take Cartier seriously in the horological market.
• Cartier shifted its focus to make its own movements in the 2000s.
• By 2025, Cartier is one of the hottest brands in the world.

It’s funny how the pendulum swings. For decades, watch purists refused to take Cartier seriously. To them, it was a jeweller dabbling in timekeeping. Masters of design, sure, but not a true watchmaker. While Cartier’s pieces were undeniably elegant, they were often powered by third-party movements and built with aesthetics, not engineering, in mind.

That didn’t sit well with traditionalists. These were the Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and Audemars Piguet crowd; the kind who valued heritage, in-house calibres, and mechanical complexity above all else. For them, watchmaking was about what ticked inside. Cartier, in contrast, was innovating design and watchmaking aesthetics.

Cartier’s reputation as a maison de luxe known for diamond-encrusted fashion watches didn’t help either. They were beautiful objects and hugely popular with fashion-forward circles, but traditionalists would only ever see them as dainty gold watches with quartz movements, which during the 70s and 80s was a death knell for mechanical credibility.

That’s because quartz watches were cheap, mass-produced, and associated with the so-called “Quartz Crisis,” which nearly destroyed the Swiss mechanical watch industry. Cartier embraced it and sold well, doing so. But to purists, this was borderline sacrilege.

The collector culture back then was also extremely insular. It favoured discreet wealth and technical mastery. There was a certain snobbery to it. Cartier, with its Parisian flair, celebrity clientele, and jewellery-first legacy, was seen as too glamorous, too commercial, too “fashion.”

So while this French luxury Maison was wildly successful and culturally influential, worn by everyone from Andy Warhol to Princess Diana, it wasn’t taken seriously by the mechanical watch community. It was admired, even loved, but rarely respected in the way “true” manufactures were.

Fast forward to 2025, and the narrative has flipped. After a string of showstopping releases at Watches & Wonders, from refined Tank Louis reissues to high-complication Privé Tank à Guichets pieces, Cartier is now firmly back in the conversation. Not just as a design icon, but as one of the most desirable names in modern watchmaking.

Cartier’s serious shift towards high watchmaking began in the early 2000s when Carole Forestier-Kasapi was appointed Head of Movement Creation. A technical genius and former winner of the prestigious Prix Gaia, Forestier-Kasapi was already known in the industry for her innovative work at Ulysse Nardin and later at Manufacture Horlogère de la Vallée de Joux (which developed movements for brands like Audemars Piguet and TAG Heuer). Cartier brought her in with a clear brief: elevate the brand’s horological credibility from the inside out.

After launching its Fine Watchmaking division, Cartier began developing proper in-house movements at scale, notably at its manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, creating everything from skeletonised calibres and tourbillons to innovative concepts like the ID One and ID Two.

Then came the relaunch of the Cartier Privé collection in 2015, which turned out to be a pivotal move in Cartier’s contemporary history. This series quietly targeted collectors in the know, revisiting historic case shapes like the Tank Cintrée, Tonneau and Cloche, and pairing them with high-end mechanical movements. They were elegant, faithful reissues designed to win over the very purists who had once dismissed the brand.

By the 2020s, this slow-burn strategy began paying off: Cartier was no longer just a jeweller with a watch division. Heads were turning for the full-fledged manufacture with historical clout, collector credibility, and a design language that no one could touch.

Watches & Wonders in 2022, 2023, and especially 2024 and 2025 saw Cartier steal the show. Re-releases of the brand’s most celebrated icons would propel this historic brand to the top of everyone’s grail list, ensuring Cartier would cement its legacy as a master of design and, now, finally, a darling of purists. It turns out, the Maison that once got written off as style over substance might have been playing the long game all along.