Francesca Cartier Brickell heads to Dubai to clarify the household behind the Cartier fashion jewelry empire
DUBAI: Author and Cartier member of the family Francesca Cartier Brickell was on hand at today’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai to discuss her book “The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire”– and Arab News took a seat with her to dive deep into the storied household’s past.
Unlike other books on Cartier, which mostly talk about the gems, Cartier Brickell’s work takes a more individual method and checks out the household itself. It highlights how a little fashion jewelry service in Paris ended up being a worldwide phenomenon, developing bedazzling pieces for kings and queens worldwide. Based upon main research study, the book takes us through numerous obstacles business dealt with, consisting of 2 world wars and the fantastic anxiety, ultimately ending up being a powerhouse in the fashion jewelry company.
One summer season, her household collected at her grandpa Jean-Jacques Cartier’s home in the south of France to commemorate his 90th birthday and little did she understand what she would find. “He asked me to bring something from the cellar, and I looked all over for it. All of a sudden, I discovered this old trunk in the corner. I opened it and it was filled with numerous household letters going back to 150 years earlier,” she stated. As soon as she provided them to her grandpa, numerous conversations on the household’s history began to take shape. “I’m so grateful he was still alive since he got to provide his side of the story. A letter does not discuss whatever or fill in the spaces– however he could. And before he passed away, I chose to discuss it since otherwise it would be lost permanently,” she stated.
While Cartier has actually constantly been associated with high-end luxury and royalty, its starts were extremely simple. Louis-François Cartier began as an apprentice in the fashion jewelry trade and worked long hours before establishing business in 1847. “It’s so simple to envision that Cartier today was constantly an industry, however it wasn’t– it was a start-up. And it was a start-up by somebody exceptionally bad and without cash. There was a transformation the very first year after he developed it, and he believed business would go under.”
While Louis-François’ kid Alfred would no doubt grow business, his grandchildren, Louis, Pierre, and Jacques, took the Cartier name to brand-new heights and created strong bonds with royalty in Europe, the Middle East, and India. Cartier Brickell invested 10 years investigating the book– taking a trip to distant locations, talking with households of old Cartier workers, digging into any archival files she might discover in significant town libraries, and even examining shipping records. Through her research study, she remembers among her most amazing memories– satisfying the Maharani of Baroda. “My terrific grandpa Jacques had actually satisfied Maharaja Sayajirao at Laxmi Vilas in Baroda palace a century earlier and had actually composed in these journals with sketches in them which I had in my belongings. I was opening among the pages, and she quickly acknowledged a sketch. A couple of minutes later on, she drew out that precise piece– a bejeweled turban accessory. There was this type of connection we had that our forefathers understood each other.”
Every chapter of the book informs a brand-new tale– whether it has to do with the rich females the 3 Cartier siblings wed, whose wealth moved business’s success, the smart and uncommon marketing techniques utilized by them, or the information behind a few of their most renowned developments. An unmissable anecdote has to do with the 45-carat ‘Hope Diamond’ Pierre Cartier purchased in 1910– infamous and presumably cursed, it was a significant danger for Cartier. Ultimately bought by United States heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean in 1912 for $180,000 ($5 million today), Pierre needed to reset it a couple of times before she lastly purchased it. “His marketing technique was dazzling. Cartier was unidentified in America, and his sibling was entirely versus mainstream marketing (so) word of mouth was the only method to do so. He purchased this gem, and he understood McLean was rich and liked making an effect. She would have these huge celebrations and use the diamond, connect it around her pet Mike, or perhaps conceal it in the garden and ask visitors to discover it! This made excellent paper product and got Cartier in journalism and into New York upper class,” Cartier Brickell stated.
Eventually, Cartier Brickell wished to highlight the human story of the Cartier household. The book is an engaging read that takes you through the highs and the lows of several generations of a household that began a company with extremely little, ultimately turning it into among the world’s most renowned great fashion jewelry labels.