Santos

Replica Cartier Santos:

A square pocket watch that Cartier had made had a serious influence on the case of the Cartier Santos. The dial’s highly legible design heralds a transition to the Art Deco style. This was characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s and still informs Cartier’s design philosophy today.

The shell was designed to be sturdy, and the screws holding the glass in place were meant to evoke the legs of the brand-new Eiffel Tower. The blackened Roman numerals suggested the radial design of Paris’s streets and broad boulevards.

By 1911, Cartier had introduced the Santos-Dumont (notice how the name has evolved). With a Jaeger movement inside, it was the first men’s wristwatch (for convenience, we’ll refer to “Santos” as the broader line over the years, while Santos-Dumont refers to a model patterned after this initial timepiece today).

When the Santos-Dumont watch first entered the market in 1911, it was available in a range of platinum and yellow gold variants, each of which was a trim 25 mm by today’s standards. The leather straps for the watches were typically brown or black and had a gold folding buckle. Another first should be noted here: Cartier invented the deployant (folding buckle), which for many years dominated the market.

In 1978, Cartier gave the watch a makeover and gave it the new name Santos de Cartier. For the bracelet and case, Cartier used stainless steel, which was a significant departure for the maison. The company had hitherto solely worked with precious metals. In order to add a touch of elegance to the watch, Cartier also applied 18k gold to the case and band. Think Wall Street’s Gordon Gecko when you see this “bimetal” gold-steel design from the 1980s. Cartier also released an all-steel version shortly after the bimetal Santos.