‘Don’t change a winning formula’: Cartier CEO on why the brand doesn’t chase trends

GENEVA – There is a moment Cartier president and chief executive Louis Ferla likes to describe. Someone receives a red box, that unmistakable Cartier red, and before it is even opened, his or her face changes. 

“I’ve never seen anybody receiving a red box and being upset,” he says, adding that he has seen that reaction play out across the world, from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Dubai.

“Maybe (afterwards) if there’s been a misunderstanding. But before they open it? Never.”

The Frenchman, who succeeded Mr Cyrille Vigneron in September 2024, has spent more than 25 years in the luxury industry. Before joining the maison’s top job, he spent seven years leading Vacheron Constantin.

Mr Ferla is holding court with half a dozen international watch journalists during a closed-door media session at Cartier’s sprawling Watches and Wonders 2026 booth in April. Across the table sits Mr Pierre Rainero, the brand’s director of image, style and heritage, and – after four decades at the maison – one of the foremost custodians of Cartier’s history and identity. 

Between them, they tend to arrive at the same conclusions, often by different routes.

Mr Ferla says: “It’s very rare that we don’t reach a consensus. And if we don’t, it’s my job to make a decision. But it’s very, very seldom.”

He concedes, with a grin, that it is a little like a marriage. “Don’t quote me on this.”

Cartier’s 2026 theme, Watchmaker of Shapes, Master of Crafts, reflects something deeply embedded in how it thinks about its work.​

Its 500 sq m booth at the fair is divided into five rooms, each making a different argument: one traces iconic case shapes including the Tank, the Santos, the Crash and the Tortue; a second examines the relationship between watchmaking and jewellery; while the third and fourth look at how traditional craft, expertise and technical innovation coexist.

The fifth room stakes the most distinctive claim: that Cartier designs the watch first, then engineers a movement to fit inside it, rather than the other way around.

It is this jeweller’s starting point, says Mr Rainero, that shapes everything else.  “We were born as a jeweller. That gave us a different eye on what is a beautiful object.” 

The result, he argues, is that even Cartier watches without diamonds or precious stones bear the sensibility of jewellery in the curve of a case, the finish of a surface or the way a bracelet sits on the wrist.

He says: “We are obsessed by the fluidity, by the comfort, by the way an object looks good on you. It’s in the DNA.”

Tapping Cartier’s archives

In 2026, Cartier created much buzz at Watches and Wonders with the return of its automotive-inspired Roadster after a 15-year absence. The revived model sharpens its 1950s sports-car DNA with a slimmer profile, speedometer-style dial and distinctive headlight-shaped date cyclops.

It also unveiled the Myst de Cartier, a new creation that blurs the line between sculpture and timepiece, inspired by the jewellery watches made under the late Jeanne Toussaint, Cartier’s iconic creative director, in the early 1930s. And then there is the Prive collection, now in its 10th year, celebrating with six extraordinary limited editions including a Crash Squelette in skeleton form, adapted to the watch’s famously irregular case.

When a journalist asks what is most often misunderstood about Cartier, Mr Ferla pauses. “I don’t know what is misunderstood. But I can tell you what is understood.”

One thing Cartier increasingly understands, and perhaps understands better than most, is the power of its own archive.

Mr Rainero notes that a growing number of clients in their 20s and 30s are seeking out designs from the 1970s to the 1990s, a phenomenon he describes as relatively new. These are buyers who arrive having already done the homework.

Mr Ferla adds: “They make very educated choices. And I think the younger generation, despite all the assumptions we make about them, are looking for ideas. They enjoy discovering something different for themselves.”

Mr Rainero suggests that its appeal lies in the sweet spot where emotion meets pragmatism. In uncertain times, enduring icons offer reassurance. “You know you are buying something with lasting value,” he says.

Mr Ferla agrees. He stresses the importance of consistency in luxury and the dangers of straying too far from what made a brand desirable in the first place.

“When something is working, continue. Don’t change a winning formula. I’ve seen many brands develop a strong identity, then move completely away from it and lose themselves.”

That philosophy, however, extends far beyond products and design codes. Shifting the conversation to the people behind the maison, he describes Cartier as “a human adventure”.

He speaks of the company’s more than 10,000 employees, its training programmes for young artisans in enamelling, gem-setting and engraving – crafts that can take 10 to 15 years to master – and an ISO certification process under way in 2026 to reduce environmental impact.

He says carefully: “I cannot say that over 10,000 colleagues are 150 per cent engaged. But I can say that the very large majority enjoy their job. They are not working only for the pay cheque.”

His argument is that this matters commercially, not just culturally. The consistency of the product, the residual value collectors rely on, the emotional pull of that red box – all of it, he suggests, trace back to people who care about what they are making.

As the session draws to a close, Mr Ferla offers one last image that sums up the spirit driving Cartier right now.

“I once heard a quote that I quite like: ‘We enjoy the shade today because someone planted trees a long time ago’.”