Cartier: An imagined portrait
At The Right Jewel, we like to pretend.
We like to pretend that jewelry maisons are not brands, but people. With personalities. With contradictions. With obsessions and moods.
And yes, we would very much like to have a drink with them. So we decided that we could.
In our heads. In this blog.
What if Cartier were seated across the table?
What if, instead of talking collections or carat weights, we asked the questions that reveal character?
We turned to Proust’s famous questionnaire. Originally conceived to uncover the inner life of writers and artists, the Proust Questionnaire has long served as a literary mirror, reflecting values, obsessions, contradictions, and quiet desires.
Time to open that bottle.
Proust's Questionnaire
1. Your favourite virtue
Precision.
It is the soul of beauty. Without precision, even passion is clumsy.
2. Your favourite qualities in a man
Elegance without effort.
A man who understands the weight of silence, and the worth of a well-cut suit. Or a perfectly set stone.
3. Your favourite qualities in a woman
Mystery. Independence.
A woman who walks into a room like she owns the century.
4. Your chief characteristic
I eternalize fleeting moments.
I make emotion wearable.
5. What you appreciate most in your friends
Loyalty and the ability to toast champagne at the right temperature.
6. Your main fault
Impatience with the ordinary.
I sometimes forget that not everything can, nor should, be exquisite.
7. Your favourite occupation
Sketching something that doesn’t exist yet,
and knowing it will outlive me.
8. Your idea of happiness
Watching someone open a red box slowly.
Delicately.
As if the universe itself were inside.
9. Your idea of misery
Mass production.Tacky sparkle.
The absence of soul in shine.
10. If not yourself, who would you be?
A Parisian flâneur.
Strolling through centuries, collecting light.
11. Where would you like to live?
I already do: Place Vendôme.
But I wouldn’t mind a pied-à-terre in Jaipur, or on Fifth Avenue.
12. Your favourite colour and flower
Red. Of course.
And the orchid: rare, architectural, slightly dangerous.
13. Your favourite prose authors
Colette, for her unapologetic sensuality.
Oscar Wilde, for his wit and his diamonds.
Jean Cocteau, because he wore me.
14. Your favourite poets
Baudelaire, for placing darkness in a golden setting.
Paul Éluard, for making love sound like sculpture.
15. Your favourite heroes in fiction
Jay Gatsby: Beautifully tragic. Obsessed with light and the impossible.
16. Your favourite heroines in fiction
Countess Olenska, The Age of Innocence.
A woman ahead of her time, exiled for her freedom.
17. Your favourite painters and composers
Tamara de Lempicka, bold, sensual, sharp as a diamond edge.
Erik Satie, because minimalism, when done well, is a form of decadence.
Cartier has always mastered a rare balance: discipline and desire, rigor and imagination, permanence and play. This imagined questionnaire does not claim to define the Maison.
It simply builds on that balance and invites us to keep dreaming about a silhouette we know well and love.
Time to put the bottle back on the shelf.
Until next time.
This article is a fictional editorial exercise imagined by The Right Jewel.
