Cartier –private proud

Too much luxury can be a sin, but sometimes we can’t help but fall prey to it. There’s something about the possibility of owning a limited edition, a special collection piece that can fuel one’s desires, and ultimately differentiate the connoisseur from the brand buyer. French luxury brand Cartier’s most exclusive watch collection, the Collection Privée Cartier Paris (privée being the French word for "private") is a definite heart pulser for the luxury timepiece collector. With pieces retailing at $8,000 to almost $30,000 – clinching the platitude "time is gold"– the collection is definitely Cartier’s prime and most luxurious. Apart from the 18k gold or platinum cases, the sapphire or mineral crystal face, and the finest leather straps, each piece, reveals Cartier’s Far East senior area manager Veronique Brodas, requires high precision craftsmanship to create the workshop-crafted mechanical movement with a manual-winding mechanism found in all 20 models. Throw out the simple wheel-lever images you usually associate with wristwatches. The timepieces in the Collection Privée Cartier Paris use a complication movement synergized by 180 watch parts so minuscule that each timepiece comes with a magnifying loop lens to fascinate and satisfy the Cartier customer with his or her luxury buy (most models come with a transparent glass back).

This collection is also, in some ways, a paean to the first brand’s very first timepieces such as the Santos, the Tonneau, and the Tortue created 150 years ago. The complication movement used by the watches from the Collection Privée is an improved technology from Cartier’s historical watches. While other watch brands try to compile everything but the microwave oven to manifest 21st century technology in their timepieces, Cartier’s interpretation of advancement is fine-tuning the handmade process by which every Cartier watch is made. While the outward appearances of Cartier’s timepieces have rarely changed over time, the mechanics responsible for the movement of each timepiece is constantly innovated. Cartier’s Collection Privée, says Roland Bussen, Cartier’s regional customer service director, utilizes the new discoveries in engineering and watch manufacturing to enhance the movement founder Louis Cartier used when he designed the first wristwatch for Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont in 1904 (the Santos watch is among Cartier’s best-selling pieces). Thus, the pieces in Cartier’s most exclusive collection each carry a significant part of Cartier’s 150-year history and heritage.

Launched in 1998 as a special collection of fine watchmaking, the Collection Privée Cartier Paris is not stationary at a particular locale or boutique. According to Bussen, each model only has about a limited number of pieces – some as few as 15 – and is displayed all over the world as an exhibit. From Manila, the collection has since moved to Hong Kong. Purchases are made through special orders.

The restricted number of pieces per model speaks of the superiority with which Cartier brandishes each piece. Says Bussen, "We recognize that there will always be a market for luxury watches like the one we have in this collection. And that market is also found in the Philippines. There are people here who recognize the quality of the Cartier brand, and these are the same people who can appreciate the pieces in this collection." Similarly, Brodas enthuses that there is a demand, particularly for complication movement watches in the country, a fact backed by Rustan’s, a carrier of Cartier in the Philippines.

Each piece boasts the signature Cartier logo, an engravement called "guilloche", and the word "Paris" on the dial – the only Cartier collection to claim such sketch.

They say there’s a high price attached to privacy. They say luxury is the best form of quality. They say you only live once and you might as well make the most of it. Nothing clinches these statements better than Cartier’s Collection Privée.

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Cartier is available at Rustan’s and information on the Collection Privée Cartier Paris is available at the Cartier boutique in Rustan’s.