Steady hands, patience, attention to detail, and an ability to enter a trance-like state—these are all qualities I associate with professional watchmakers. At the Cartier manufacturer in La Chaux-de-Fonds this week, I learned it also requires a dedication to being swole as hell. I came to this information the hard way, at the end of an enameling class. After “painting” a dial with enamel (powdered glass) and putting it in an almost 1,500-degree Fahrenheit oven, the last step was to polish my creation. I knew this would be a problem when the master enameler leading the session suggested that my other classmates and I stand to use our full weight while pushing our dials into the polishing stones. At the end of our class, all our foreheads glistened with sweat even though not a single one of us could finish polishing the dials we were given to play with. It was a good lesson in how difficult it is to master just one of the crafts that have helped push perfect Cartier replica watches to the top of the watch world in recent years.
During my visit to the Cartier manufacturer, I was a little surprised by how open our tour guides were about the brand’s approach to industry dominance: prioritizing exterior artistry over technical wizardry inside UK AAA fake Cartier watches. The brand’s strategy works from the outside in, not the other way around, the opposite of many watchmakers that dream up complications before imagining the packaging to house it. The very idea of setting technical records was dismissed: As long as the watch is reliable, Cartier knows it can win with design. That bet has been paying off over the past few years, as Cartier has risen to become the second largest Swiss watchmaker by market share, according to the annual industry report from Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult. The brand’s rise is emblematic of a greater shift in collector taste from specced-out complicated Cartier copy watches for sale to expressive and pretty designs.
To see the crafts (the métiers d’art) that have Cartier behind only Rolex, I got on a plane—well, three planes—to Geneva. Cartier’s main manufacturer is as big as seven football fields, but much of the brand’s magic is made in a renovated 17th-century farmhouse just up the road, where the high watchmaking is done. The line separating what’s produced in the farmhouse versus the main factory is about as straight as the brand’s famous Crash design but the divide is set somewhere between a multi-pusher chronographer and monopusher (a more complicated version of the stopwatch function controlled with just one button). Recent popular releases like the skeletonized Swiss made replica Cartier Tank Normale and lacquer-dial Santos-Dumont watches are produced in the farmhouse.
After the humbling enamel class, I made my way to the top floor. The bucolic hills surrounding the farmhouse appeared alive with the sound of music, but inside the rooms were buzzing with the noise of obscure crafts. I heard bursts of concentrated air, the suction of a vacuum seal inside a machine where a man controlled a laser to shape a panther ear made of gold, the rough scraping of an abrasive hand-held polishing machine, and the quick click from a tiny hammer that secures gemstones in their settings.
Cartier, along with many other high-end Swiss watchmakers, are filled with rooms of people who specialize in their hyper-niche crafts. (The term métiers d’art literally translates to “art professions.”) Housed in Cartier’s farmhouse are people who spend their days doing one very specific task: enameling, marquetry, and gem-setting. The folks assembling the pieces at best Cartier super clone watches are said to be capable of guessing which artisan placed the jewels on a gold bezel or outrageous diamond-encrusted panther head. This is the type of personal touch that maintains Cartier’s allure, where other brands might emphasize timekeeping accuracy or intricate mechanical complications.
My enameling class was a brief but humbling introduction to that world. Inside a room at the bottom of the farmhouse was a table set up with stations that included a shot glass of water, a fine-tipped paintbrush, and four small bowls filled with a small range of enamel shades ranging from lime green to indigo. I tilted the bowl of an emerald tint to find the soft grainy enamel underneath the water. I dipped my paintbrush and picked up a gob of the powder. Next, I was supposed to use the brush to apply the enamel onto areas so small that the Cartier team provided loupes. I found that enameling is like trying to corral wet sand into microscopic compartments with a paintbrush. It was an impossible task—and that was before I got to the sweaty polishing portion of the class.
But while Cartier proudly doesn’t make a fuss over breaking technical records, making high-design top Cartier replica watches UK requires dedication to another type of technical ingenuity. I passed one man whose speciality is making the shaped crystal (the glass that covers a watch) for Cartier’s specific shapes. The brand can’t simply buy crystal to fit peculiar shapes it produces like the luxury 2024 fake Cartier Crash watches, Cloche, Asymétrique, so it makes them itself using a tiny flaming merry-go-round. I watched through a glass pane as a single specialist attached long strips of glass to the circular base fitted with the molds for the crystal that tops the long, thin Baignoire Allongée model and set it spinning underneath a torch spewing a blue flame. This fiery contraption is the product of a team of 20 people at Cartier whose job it is just to develop new tools fit for the brand’s oddball creations.
So while Cartier might not be competing to make the thinnest or most complicated watch anytime soon, it flexes its technical abilities in other ways. The brand understands its reputation as the watchmaker of shapes is what will keep it at the top of the industry. If collectors continue to lean into their own personal tastes, rather than reflexively reaching for the standard round steel sport high quality replica Cartier watches, Cartier’s customer base seems primed to continue to grow. The brand’s farmhouse full of arts-and-craft professionals will be instrumental in making that happen. As I left the brand’s main factory Wednesday afternoon, there was a bag in Cartier’s signature crimson waiting for me. Inside was the dial I left unfinished at my enameling class, now expertly polished down. The artisans at Cartier somehow made my feeble attempt at enameling look halfway decent.