Something special happened in 1969. Aldo Cipullo, an Italian-born American jewellery designer, offered the French maison Cartier a bangle he’d dreamt up after a heartbreak. Moved by romantic vagaries, Cipullo sought a jewel that embodied more permanent feelings. An oval bracelet formed of two halves of gold, joined by screws and secured with a screwdriver. This is, of course, the Cartier Love bracelet, perhaps the single most famous piece of designer jewellery in the world.
Cipullo’s design was radical for a number of reasons. First, it completely bucked the expectation for jewellery to come encrusted with gemstones. His was a bangle of pure, graphic lines wrought in gold. Second, he tapped into the post-industrial— and possibly postmodern—zeitgeist, leaving unromantic screw markings visible and turning them into a design feature in their own right. With this, he imbued a hard-edged bangle with tender meaning: love, taken not with the nostalgia of the past, but with the immediacy of the modern world.
The success of the Love bracelet barely needs mention. It has become the aspirational status-symbol jewel and pretty much invented the category of the signature solid gold bangle. Debates, to this day, persist on whether the Love bracelet’s popularity has made it passé, but the question is irrelevant: it is an icon. In the 56 years since it was introduced by Cartier, the Love bracelet has shrunk and grown to three widths, come with a smattering of or full pavés of diamonds, and welcomed a hinge that makes wearing it easier—but it has, essentially, stayed the same.
That changes this year with the new Love Unlimited line, the most meaningful and major evolution of the collection thus far. Its design turns the rigid form of the classic Love bracelet on its head with a completely supple new style that wraps around, rather than rests on, the wrist. The new bracelets tap on a number of advances in savoir-faire. It took Cartier over 100 prototypes to figure out a way to join sections of gold together—over 200 tiny parts connect the bracelet on the inside—so the bracelet moves as fluidly as a ribbon yet maintains the pure, graphic line of the Love collection. To further enhance this purity of line, Cartier designed a new patent-pending invisible clasp adapted from its high jewellery creations.
Visually, the Love Unlimited bracelets introduce a fresh touch of texture. They adopt the very French detail of gadroons, a ribbed decorative motif, that combined with high polish gives the bracelets an alluring play with light. They’re designed to wear well with other bracelets on the wrist, but perhaps the most imaginative aspect is that the clasp can combine with other Love Unlimited bracelets. Two, three, four or certainly more, can be joined up to invent new ways of wearing the jewel: a double- or triple-tour bracelet in different colours of gold; looped around the waist as a belt, draped as a necklace, slung across the body or even fitted around the bicep. Just as love can take infinite forms, the possibilities of Cartier’s new jewels are quite unlimited.
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Love Unlimited ring in white gold, $3,950
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Love Unlimited ring in yellow gold, $3,700
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Love Unlimited ring in rose gold, $3,700
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Love Unlimited bracelet in white gold, $13,400
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Love Unlimited bracelet in yellow gold, $12,500
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Love Unlimited bracelet in rose gold, $12,500
The November ‘Nourish’ issue of Vogue Singapore is available to online and on newsstands.
