Welcome to our series highlighting the exceptional watches available through PERPETUAL, Phillips’ boutique service offering immediate access to the world’s rarest and most desirable timepieces. You can view all currently available watches by visiting our London headquarters at 30 Berkeley Square, our seasonal summer boutique inside Switzerland's Gstaad Palace, or by visiting Phillips PERPETUAL online. Our new "Buy Now" button makes acquiring the watch of your dreams easier than ever.
– By Logan Baker
Few watches epitomize a recent era of watchmaking as precisely as the Must de Cartier watches do for Swiss watchmaking in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The Quartz Revolution was in full swing at the time, wreaking havoc on both the commercial margins and consumer desirability of practically every well-known Swiss watchmaker. Cartier wasn’t exempt from the occasion – and so, the “jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers," as King Edward VII so famously put it, created and relesed Les Must de Cartier collection, in 1977 – AKA, “These Cartiers are a MUST.”
Les Must de Cartier watches were quartz, colorful, and affordable – a stark contrast from the Cartier of old that prioritized hand-sculpted precious-metal form watches made in extremely small series by craftsmen at the firm’s three workshops in London, Paris, and New York.
No, Les Must de Cartier embraced mass production, building the historic jeweler in a new direction under the leadership of Robert Hocq, Alain-Dominique Perrin, and Joseph Kanoui, a group that had acquired all three of the main Cartier workshops and storefronts one-by-one in painstaking fashion during the early and mid-1970s.
The Cartier Must watches were introduced to the world in 1977, only one year after the trio had completed their acquisition of the final of the three historic Cartier locations, with the purchase of Cartier New York.
Pressure must have been coming in hot for Hocq, Kanoui, and Perrin. Not only were quartz timepieces from the Far East rapidly growing their market share with each passing day, but they also had to contend with the outsize influence of Cartier's long, distinguished history. And so the group made what might be one of the most consequential bets of their lives: that Cartier would be able to preserve its historic level of prestige while at the same opening up their watch and jewelry catalogs to attract a more aspirational level of consumer.
That’s what the Cartier Must watches were all about – widening the scope of the Cartier brand to attract a surging demographic of upper middle class “new money” individuals in the United States and Europe. The watches carried through a familiar Tank shape that fit squarely within Cartier’s established aesthetic while also offering a large number of stylish options in a variety of colors and case materials and finishes. These early Must de Cartier watches represented the first time Cartier had ever produced any of its watches in series in a non-precious metal.
The Must didn’t discriminate. Its $500 price tag and stainless-steel construction attracted both men and women in equal measure. The collection's popularity soon proved so profound that Cartier decided to add a higher tier to the Must range, with the introduction of the so-called “Vermeil” Must models that featured solid silver cases with an external gold-capped layer for an added air of grandeur.
The design of these original Must releases not only proved succesful among the nascent High Street crowd but they also served as a bit of a shot across the bow at the rise of quartz.
A quartz movement, of course, provides a more precise timekeeping solution for the average watch wearer’s needs. So what did Cartier do with its first major run of quartz watches?
It turned its nose up at the Must’s battery-powered precision timekeeping engine by pairing it with wide-open empty dial spaces, with just two hands and zero markers for the passing hours, minutes, and seconds.
The original Must, then, served as a tangible embodiment of Andy Warhol’s famous quote about his personal Cartier Tank: “I don't wear a Tank to tell the time. In fact, I never wind it. I wear a Tank because it's the watch to wear.”
The Must was certainly "the watch to wear" among a significant cohort of individuals throughout the 1970s and all the way up until at least the late 1990s.
The craze surrounding Les Must de Cartier watches during their original run is even a bit reminiscent of a much more modern watch-industry phenomenon in the: the MoonSwatch.
Think about it – MoonSwatch is a colorful, affordable, and quartz-powered alternative to the legendary Omega Speedmaster, very similar to the relationship between the younger Cartier Must line and the Cartier Tank. Both releases caused a sensation among the watch-buying public in the aftermath of their release, and both received a decent bit of criticism from a certain segment of the watch-collecting world for evolving what it means to own either a Tank or a Speedmaster today.
Although we don’t know today what might happen with the MoonSwatch in the future, the Must de Cartier collection has already lasted multiple life cycles. The Must line was officially discontinued in the early 2000s, around the same time Cartier began a significant pivot upmarket with the development of the incredibly complex CPCP and Fine Watchmaking Collection line-ups.
More recently, Les Must de Cartier made a major reappearance in 2021 when Cartier revealed a number of new Must watches during the year’s Watches & Wonders showcase. The much-discussed Tank Must SolarBeat made waves as Cartier’s first-ever solar-powered wristwatch, but many Cartier lovers (particularly those of a certain age) were in fact drawn to a batch of three individual large-sized Must introductions with beautiful empty dials in the classic color options of burgundy, blue, and green. Cartier even took the Must's dedication to minimalism a step further compared to the vintage pieces, with the reissues feauring no text or logos on the dial, save for the simple “Cartier” and “Swiss Made” wordmarks.
As quickly as these three new colorful Must de Cartier models arrived, they disappeared. It’s not known how many of these contemporary Musts were made, but the production run appeared to last no longer than 12 to 18 months. The only watch to retain the classic Must de Cartier look – an open monochromatic dial in a steel Tank case with a quartz movement – and that remains in the Cartier collection today (as of July 2023) is a small-sized, black-dialed option (ref. WSTA0071) that was added to the Cartier catalog in 2022, a blacked-out sequel to the colorful triplets from the previous year.
If the colorful-dial Musts from two years ago are more your style than the current-production black version, then we've got some good news for you: Phillips PERPETUAL was recently able to source two of the three 2021 dial options – in green (ref. WSTA0056), and in blue (ref. WSTA0055) – each in barely worn condition and coming with their original box and paperwork. The watches are both available for immediate sale through Phillips PERPETUAL, for £3,950 each.
About Phillips PERPETUAL
Phillips PERPETUAL offers a boutique experience to clients for both the sale and purchase of fine and rare watches, in London’s Berkeley Square and the Gstaad Palace, in Switzerland.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade reporting on every aspect of the watch business. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
Visit Phillips PERPETUAL /
30 Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom, W1J 6EX (map)
Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM – 17:30 PM
Contact & Consignment Enquiries /
00 44 207 901 7916
perpetual@phillips.com
@phillipsperpetual
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