The Crash watch saga began in the heart of Swinging London. The year was 1967 when a Cartier customer confided their London boutique with repairing a damaged watch. But the object had a shockwave effect: the stripped down design stupefied Jean-Jacques Cartier, the branch director, and he found himself charmed by it. The carefree and nonconformist shapes of the casing enraptured the watchmaker so much so that he wanted to reuse the same design in a unique and precious new watch. That’s how Cartier ended up turning the conventions of watchmaking upside down, introducing humor and refinement into a domain dominated by precision and exactitude. Easily recognizable with its asymmetric dial evoking distortion and unexpected events, the Crash watch has become a modern and off-kilter creation throughout time, symbol of an era where originality reigned supreme. The piece even recalls the famous melting watches in the Salvador Dali masterpiece “The Persistence of Memory”.
This collector’s piece is today coveted by the elite as a 70s icon. The Cartier gem is part of a list of creations that left their mark on their time; and today, the Crash is still telling its story. But Cartier has never hesitated to update their icon. In 2013, the brand brought the Crash legend back to life through a limited edition dedicated to women. Four new timepieces were released for the first time with a sumptuous adornment of drops of grey or rose gold, available in only 267 copies. The ultra-precious version only saw 67 copies released, numbered on white diamond encrusted bracelets. This restrained number is an homage to the birth year of the mythic piece. In 2014, Cartier brought the Crash Skeleton watch into the unisex universe. Made of platinum, this timepiece alternates design and fine watchmaking, housing a manual mechanical caliber in its casing that’s visible through its skeleton dial. A true object of desire, the Crash watch is more than ever with the times.
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