Almost 40 years after its creation, the Panthère de Cartier watch remains as popular today as when it was first created in 1983, a golden symbol of the decade’s unadulterated glamour, and an instant hit with men and women alike.
This watch-meets-jewel, with its sleek link bracelet, square case and rounded edges, embodies the elegance and timelessness of a style icon, and that’s why it is one of the seven classic designs explored in Studio 7 by Cartier, a photographic exhibition opening at the Saatchi Gallery on Friday (23 July). One chapter features legends of yesteryear wearing their Cartier pieces – from Andy Warhol in his Tank to Jean Cocteau in his Trinity ring – and another brings it bang up to date with portraits of modern friends of the maison, including boxer Ramla Ali in her beloved Panthère, as photographed by Mary McCartney.
In 1987’s Wall Street, as the money starts rolling in for Charlie Sheen’s ambitious trader Bud Fox, he upgrades from a pedestrian quartz Lorus to a yellow gold Cartier Panthère. A symbol of his commitment to the unscrupulous “Greed is good” mantra of his mentor Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas), Fox’s Panthère is the horological little brother to Gecko’s gold Cartier Santos.
The Panthère’s status as an ’80s icon is why Ali loves it, but it is not the decade’s greed that inspires her, rather its powerful women, from Madonna and Jane Fonda (themselves wearers of the watch), to Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington and even Margaret Thatcher. “It was such a wave of amazing iconic women in music, fashion and culture who began to really have their voices heard publicly, and for me this timepiece represents that monumental shift in our culture,” Ali, herself an image of powerful womanhood if ever there was one, tells British Vogue.
The boxing champion is currently in Tokyo preparing to make her Olympics debut this weekend. She is battling with not only the training restrictions caused by a global pandemic, but the fact that Richard Moore, her husband and trainer, has fallen ill with appendicitis and is on a daily drip of antibiotics to prevent his appendix bursting. She reacts with her usual humour and positivity, joking that Moore says “he feels like he’s in a scene from the film Speed and needs to get the Olympic mission completed before the bomb in his stomach goes off”.
The appeal of the Panthère to Ali is that, in the face of constantly changing fashion trends and social media pressure to be wearing the latest look, it is a reminder of what the Parisians do best: “You don’t need a hundred watches, you just need one great one, and the Panthère is exactly that.”
The panther has been a mainstay of of the French maison ever since Louis Cartier commissioned an illustration by George Barbier of a panther at a woman’s feet for an early Cartier exhibition invitation in 1913. The big cat came into its own with long-term creative director Jeanne Toussaint – a one-time lover of Louis, who called her his “Petite Panthère” – she went on to create the first panther jewels for jewellery fanatic Wallis Simpson in the 1940s, and they have been a brand signature ever since. In the ’80s, the Panthère watch became an abstract interpretation of the creature, its slinky elegance echoing the big cat’s movements, its strength and its nonchalance.
Available in a variety of sizes, the watch became popular with men and women alike, a symbol of ’80s glamour as worn by Pierce Brosnan and Keith Richards, Madonna and Jane Fonda. Gwyneth Paltrow gave it a ’90s twist, wearing it on the red carpet as she catapulted to fame in films like Se7en and Shakespeare in Love.
The Panthère was eventually retired in the early 2000s. It relaunched in Los Angeles in 2017, and has since found a legion of new fan, including Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid, Sienna Miller and Sofia Coppola. Even First Lady Jill Biden wore it to keep time on Inauguration Day. They have given Cartier’s big cat a new lease of life, and are proof that the Panthère has entered the horological hall of fame.
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Cartier presents Studio 7 at the Saatchi Gallery in London from Friday 23 July to Sunday 8 August 2021. To visit, book tickets here
