Showing its eccentric side, Cartier modified its signature watch silhouettes in creating imaginative limited editions under the Cartier Libre collection.
The five newly designed, idiosyncratic timepieces are a result of an artistic play on proportions that includes stretching, shrinking and accentuating the volume of the oval shape,
Four of them are twists on the Baignoire, which first appeared in 1912 with an elegant ellipse forged in a single line silhouette.
Baignoire Débordante is architectured with openwork petals embellished with black spinels, radiating around the watch in a case set with diamonds.
With a stretched oval shape, Baignoire Infinie draws attention to its dizzying dial paved with baguette-cut diamonds, black spinels as well as white Tahitian mother-of-pearl. Reading the time requires zooming in on a minuscule black dial encircled by a ring of diamonds.
Set with a double row of stones, the little black dial is stretched horizontally in Baignoire Etoilée, whose bracelet sparkles with a cascade of diamonds and black spinels.
The oval dial is turned crosswise to disorient the eye, in the design of Baignoire Interdite. The edgy appearance is enhanced by strips of oversized black Roman numerals wrapped around the case with a paved bezel.
The white gold Baignoire models are equipped with quartz movements whereas the yellow gold Crash Radieuse runs on a manual movement.
Cartier designers crashed the original Crash watch, created in 1967 to express the carefree spirit of the era, some more. The resulting quirky new model has a crumpled case and stretched Roman numerals laid out on a hallucinating dial. And it tells the time, too.
