Crash Watch: The Most Important Vintage Watch of 2021

Amazing to see interest in the Crash Watch continuing to snowball, not sure my grandfather would have believed it...

In a way, the #CrashWatch was born out of the family motto #NeverCopyOnlyCreate - the design was ground-breaking in its refusal to follow conventional watch shapes. Neither rectangular, oval, square nor circular; it was bold and different. Too different for some: ironically, when #JeanJacquesCartierfirst released it - in Swinging Sixties #cartierlondon don - the unusual shape proved almost too radical for the time and one of the firm's top watch clients, the actor #StuartGranger, was said to have returned his for something more conventional!

Today, over half a century on, if the press and celebrity interest and recent auction records are anything to go by, it’s become something of a design icon. A rare one though: just over a dozen of the original London Crashes were ever made under JJC and since then, there have only been a few limited series. For more, check out this latest @hodinkee article, "How the Cartier Crash Became The Most Important Vintage Watch of 2021" on the #CartierCrashphenomenon: all the way from its origins in the collaboration between Jean-Jacques and #RupertEmmerson up on the top floors of #175NewBondStreet in the 1960s to American rapper Tyler the Creator @feliciathegoat wearing it (in this photo) at a Monaco watch auction recently.

My thanks to Tony @rescapement for interviewing me for the article, and will be interesting to see if vintage Cartier London watch designs sustain this high level of interest in the years ahead. What do you think?