Inside Cartier’s new Bond Street store, complete with cocktail bar and VIP ‘boudoir’
Champagne and Christmas shopping are a dangerous combination - but at Cartier’s newly reopened Bond Street flagship, which welcomed its first customers this week, the practice is positively encouraged. Within the exclusive private residence on the store’s second floor - an apartment-like space reserved for VIPs - is a fully stocked cocktail bar, all warm lighting and chrome fittings, its top shelf stocked with Cartier-branded champagne.
The French jewellery house has good reason to celebrate: after nine months of top-to-toe renovations, it now boasts the most palatial boutique on Bond Street, measuring 7,275 sq ft and with interiors more akin to a five-star hotel than a traditional shop.
The newly enlarged, Grade II-listed store’s ground floor now extends from Bond Street to a second entrance on Albemarle Street, and three floors are open to customers, their interiors reimagined by Paris-based architect Bruno Moinard.
On the ground floor, visitors are welcomed by a bespoke lighting installation by Paris based light Studio Mydriaz, designed to evoke birds in flight. Past counters of the latest fine jewellery launches are spaces dedicated to women’s watches, handbags and accessories - including the jewel-box-like Guirlande bag, available exclusively at Bond Street and the other two Cartier ‘temples’ in Paris and New York.
Beyond that stretches an area devoted to engagement rings and bridal jewellery, while a separate slice of the ground floor is reserved for all things male: from watches and wallets to pens and briefcases, complete with a bespoke lighting installation by Studio Drift.
Throughout the store are displays of novelties from the Cartier archive: here these include a pair of gold-buckled suspenders and an engraved cigarette case commissioned by Sir Winston Churchill.
Cartier first opened the flagship in 1909, having set up in London seven years earlier, at the behest of King Edward VII, who called the house “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers”. Many original features from this period remain: from the ornate cornicing and doorframes, made modern with fresh white paint, to the grand oak-panelled staircase, whose walls are lined with bespoke, flocked Pierre Frey wallpaper and hung with photographs and sketches of extraordinary Cartier jewels.
Speaking of extraordinary jewels, to celebrate the reopening the boutique is hosting an exhibition of archive pieces and never-before-seen high jewellery within its first-floor ‘Prestige’ salon.
The Cartier Collection comprises important historical pieces that the house has acquired over the course of decades. For this exhibition, its curator has selected exquisite pieces that were handmade within this very building, in the English Artworks workshop that opened within the Bond Street store in 1922.
Bold, colourful tiaras created for the coronation of King George VI in 1937 sit alongside an extravagant emerald and diamond necklace commissioned by Beatrice Forbes, Countess of Granard - who was once criticised for ‘out-shining’ Queen Alexandra - and a 1938 diamond rose brooch that belonged to Princess Margaret.
A glimpse at the glamour and grandeur of the lives of customers who passed through Cartier’s doors more than 80 years ago, these Cartier Collection jewels are property of the archive. But those who have a fondness for the vintage style will be enchanted by a display cabinet full of jewels from the Cartier Tradition collection, which have been restored to their original condition and are once again for sale.
Whether one of these vintage pieces or a brand new high jewellery creation - several new additions to this year’s Coloratura collection have been shipped to London especially for the reopening - there are plenty of private spaces to try on potential purchases. The boutique boasts four private salons, all outfitted with bespoke furnishings in plush jewel-toned hues.
Perhaps madame might like to try on a Tutti Frutti bib necklace in the Salon Jacques Cartier, its black walls illuminated with burnished gold accents - or discover the new limited-edition Crash watch in the Windsor Winter Garden, a plant-strewn sanctuary complete with glass roof and Asian-inspired folding screen?
Monsieur may prefer to weigh up the relative merits of the Tank and the Santos within another private salon, the former office where Charles de Gaulle was photographed by Cecil Beaton, after Cartier offered the general sanctuary during World War II.
But it’s ‘La Residence’ on the second floor that will prove a home-from-home for the house’s biggest spenders: complete with a dining table, living room, fully equipped kitchen and Instagram-worthy ‘boudoir’ for essential pre-party preening - not to mention that Cartier-branded bar, which will soon be in full swing.
With the boutique’s official opening party planned for early 2019 and this summer’s high jewellery celebrations also taking place in the capital, Cartier’s London legacy looks set to continue for another century at least.
175-177 New Bond Street; cartier.co.uk
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