Cartier
SIHH 2018: The Return of the Cartier Santos
A possible reason why this had taken so long to happen, is that Tank watches, and also others like the Santos, Tortue or Tonneau, were always made in gold or platinum and, therefore, were not always within reach for everyone.
But a change in the maison’s vision in the late 70s made Cartier accessible to a larger audience. In 1978, the gentleman who was assigned as Marketing Manager of Cartier at the time, Dominique Perrin, came up with a clever idea, to launch an affordable sports watch, based on the legendary ‘Santos Dumont’. The watch needed to appeal to a younger crowd and fit a variety of lifestyles.
The answer was steel, a material Cartier had not worked with before for watches. Other than a black bakelite Santos in 1924, this was one of the first, or may be the first watch by Cartier, that was not made in a precious metal.
However, in order to give the new watch a sense of luxury still, Perrin and his team decided to launch the model in steel with gold accents. A daring combination, since the mix of steel and gold was not common at all, at that time.
Cartier was one of the first, if not the first company to introduce this new trend. So, the Santos was actually born to be a two-tone timepiece. The screws on the bezel and the screws on the bracelet of the watch, in gold, were the right elements to highlight the combination of these two metals. There have not been many timepieces since, even at Cartier, that look so good in two-tone as the Santos.
Shortly after, an all steel model was released that increased the Santos’ popularity, quiet, substantially. Fame, however, also has its down side and it did not take long before the first copies of the watch flooded Europe and the US.
This new problem was almost impossible to beat. Despite the fact that Cartier launched different versions, like a Moon phase model, a round, an octagonal model and even a chronograph; the classic Santos was the most copied watch in the world for many years.
In 1987, the Santos was drastically revised, renamed and relaunched as the Santos Galbée. The case lost its boxy looks and became more curved, smooth and fit better on the wrist than the original Santos.
From an aesthetic point of view, the XL is — or was — very well balanced and was, possibly, the best-looking Santos since itså introduction. The name Santos Galbée has become, in the meantime, the common name for all Santos watches, but in fact, only the models made after 1987, were Galbée models.
Around 2016, there was some ruckus in the public media and questions even popped up on my Instagram account, asking why the model had disappeared, from the official Cartier websites. This was a first, since it was introduced in 1978. The watch became sold out at boutiques and was not being produced anymore.
A fact that not many understood, since this was one of Cartier’s most famous watches; a legend and a pillar of Cartier’s watchmaking efforts.
This was however the period of silence; the period that the Cartier team needed, to take the Santos and all of its many varieties, to create an updated version suitable for the present day and one that will be able to stand the test of time for many more decades to come.
Now, exactly forty years after the initial introduction of the Santos, Cartier has given the watch its rightful welcome back into the catalogs at SIHH 2018.
Also, for those looking for something extra, Cartier’s made a skeleton version of the large sized Santos in steel and pink gold, which shows off la maison’s knack for skeletonized movements. Both these versions come with matching metal bracelets. Which then brings us to the other bracelet innovation Cartier has revealed concurrently. This they’ve called the SmartLink self-fitting technology (patent pending). It allows for toolless adjustment of the metal bracelet’s length to the nearest link.