Cartier s new Tank Must watches. Photo courtesy Cartier.
Last week, Cartier debuted three new watches that pay homage to one of the luxury French house’s earliest design risks: the decision by founder Louis Cartier to produce a watch shaped like a rectangle in 1917 in lieu of the day’s more conventional circular style.
Though the idea may sound simple, at the time it was perceived as a particularly avant-garde move to center design over utility, which was met with a good deal of skepticism in the highly conservative world of haute horology.
But Cartier’s design innovation didn’t sacrifice function. Inspired by the design of a combat vehicle, the “Tank” watch introduced, for the first time, case attachments that aligned with the watch’s strap to maintain the rhythm of the design and keep the watch more securely in place.
Green Is the New Blue & Other Lessons From Watches and Wonders
Watches & Wonders 2021: Green Is the New Blue, Affordable Bangers & the Downright Outrageous
Patek Philippe
For watch enthusiasts, Watches & Wonders 2021 is the Super Bowl and Paris Fashion Week all rolled into one. Owed to the pandemic, the industry’s largest fair was rendered fully digital this week, meaning dozens of brands from Patek Philippe and Rolex to IWC and Vacheron Constantin trotted out their new timepieces with online announcements and press releases. That didn t stop us all from losing our collective minds over the hottest (and weirdest) releases on Instagram.
Quick Take
So far, Watches & Wonders has brought us some genuine surprises, and not the least of them is the new SolarBeat movement-equipped Tank Must. The watch is the first solar-powered watch in the Tank collection, but it is also the first solar-powered watch ever from Cartier.
The watch is cased in stainless steel and comes in two sizes, at 33mm x 25.5mm for the large model, and 29.5 x 22mm for the small model. Cartier says that owners can expect, on average, a running time of 16 years before the watch requires a service (I assume that s the number of years that we can expect the rechargeable storage cell to last, as even rechargeable batteries have a finite number of recharge cycles). The idea is to not only make the watch an elegant, trouble-free, daily-wear, set-it-and-forget-it watch, but also to reduce its environmental impact, and in keeping with that theme, the straps – in black, blue, or light green – are made from non-animal leather, produced from scraps of apple
Cartier Kicks Off Watches and Wonders With a Must-Have Take on the Tank esquire.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from esquire.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.