Getting Down to Nuts & Bolts With Cartier's "Écrou" Collection
Brand: Cartier
Model: Écrou de Cartier rings, bracelets, earrings, necklaces
Season: Fall/Winter 2021
Price: $2,430-$20,600
Buy: Cartier's website and stores, stockists like Harrods
Editor's Notes: If you aren't familiar with Cartier's unisex "Écrou de Cartier" collection, it's informed by a simple concept. This collection, released in relatively concise batches each season, sees the luxury jeweler giving industrial hardware an opulent spin, transforming nuts and bolts with plush gold, silver, and diamonds.
Écrou de Cartier — "Écrou" literally means nut, as in the hardware, in French — is mostly staying the course for Fall/Winter 2021, which launched in November.
Rings, bracelets, necklaces, brooches, and other flashy accessories ridged bands and hexagonal accents inspired by all manner of fasteners, leveled up by yellow gold and the occasional diamond accent.
Of course, it's the larger, diamond-studded pieces that weigh in at five figures but, remember, this is Cartier we're talking about here.
Industrial inspiration isn't inherently new for high jewelry, of course. Cartier's iconic Juste un Clou is basically a golden nail wrapped in the shape of a bracelet.
Plenty of other brands, as big as Maison Margiela and as small as Werkstatt:München, have explored industrial themes in their jewelry lines, too.
There's an inherent appeal in seeing utilitarian shapes like paper clips and nails remixed with high-end materials. It's the high-low contrast, the surprising elevation of something ordinary into the extraordinary.
Tiffany & Co. has explored this premise with its silver basketballs and gilded pool tables.
Of course, few luxury labels take the high-low mix to greater extremes than Chrome Hearts.
