AN ORIGIN STORY

K, let’s get this out of the way so there’s no confusion. A Cartier Santos, or Santos de Cartier, is a watch on a bracelet featuring screws on both its bezel and its bracelet. While it was clearly derived from the Cartier Santos-Dumont, the very first known luxury men’s wristwatch designed for Alberto Santos-Dumont by his friend Louis Cartier, it was actually conceptualised by a legend in the watch industry named Alain-Dominique Perrin, Cartier’s CEO from 1975 to 1998. Understanding that he was at the helm of Cartier during a turbulent era beset by both the Quartz Crisis as well as the OPEC Oil Embargo and the global economic recession of 1973 to 1975, he knew he had to think out of the box. Riding on the massive hit represented by the Le Must de Cartier watches — the brand’s lower-priced diffusion line — launched the year before in 1977, he introduced a revolutionary new wristwatch named the Santos in 1978 with the objective to connect the design language of Cartier to a whole new generation. Perrin wanted to do something truly audacious in the context of Cartier’s history and that was to make a watch in steel. However, he always wanted the watch to allude to the grandeur of Cartier, and he understood that the modest yet strategically applied use of gold elements could both elevate the perceived value of the watch and also create a bold and easily