THE CURATED EDITION.
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Jacob Elordi returns to Cartier, photographed this time by his sister Isabella, for the next chapter of LOVE Unlimited: an all-gold necklace, diamond-set bangles and a patented invisible clasp.
WATCHES & JEWELLERY
Some jewels are put on. The LOVE is locked. Since 1969, Cartier’s bracelet has come off the wrist only with a small screwdriver, which may be why it became the most intimate piece of modern jewellery. For the new chapter of LOVE Unlimited, the Maison has taken that intimacy literally: the person photographing Jacob Elordi this time is his sister.
The LOVE was born in New York, in the year the Italian designer Aldo Cipullo joined Cartier. Instead of a clasp, two small screws. Instead of an ordinary gift, a pact: the bracelet came with its own screwdriver and was meant to be given by one person and fastened on the wrist of another. It was the end of the 1960s, and the idea of a love both free and committed fitted neatly into a ring of gold.
By the early 1970s, the piece was already associated with names such as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Andy Warhol. Five decades on, the visible screw remains one of the most recognisable codes in jewellery, endlessly imitated and never quite matched.
Elordi first fronted LOVE Unlimited last year, photographed in New York by Sofia Coppola, who directed him in Priscilla. For his return, Cartier traded the celebrated director for someone closer. Isabella Elordi photographed her brother in almost domestic scenes: a cup of tea in a hotel room, an unmade bed, a bathroom mirror, a rooftop with the city behind him. The jewel appears as it does in real life, on the wrist of someone who is not posing for it.
“I wanted to portray Jacob as I know him,” says Isabella. That ease, impossible to commission from a stranger, is what gives the images their weight.
LOVE Unlimited takes the codes of 1969 and opens them to new combinations. The headline piece is a necklace made entirely of gold, in rose, yellow or white, its fluid links punctuated by the collection’s screws. Each piece brings together some two hundred miniaturised components, polished by hand.
On the bangles and rings, the screws give way to round diamonds held in settings that echo the shape of the screw. The cleverest detail, however, is invisible: the diamond bangle carries a clasp patented by Cartier that allows it to be joined to another, whether a different version from the collection or the original all-gold LOVE. The bracelet designed to bind two people now binds two jewels as well.
In 1969, Aldo Cipullo designed a jewel that needed two people to exist: one to close it, another to wear it. More than half a century later, Cartier has handed the camera to a sister and the wrist to her brother. The pact is unchanged. It has simply grown more intimate.
Details and further reading: Cartier, LOVE Unlimited collection.
Instagram: @cartier.
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.
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