EXCLUSIVE: Cartier to Unveil Precious Garage Concept at New York Fashion Week

Cartier will unveil its Precious Garage concept during New York Fashion Week, an installation done for the French jeweler by New York-based artist Desi Santiago.

The installation will usher in new iterations of the brand’s Juste un Clou and écrou de Cartier collections, beginning with a party on Sept. 6 at Cartier’s Fifth Avenue mansion hosted by Mercedes Abramo, president and chief executive officer of Cartier North America, and Bernadette Hitt, director of the Cartier mansion.

Santiago has made a name for himself bridging art and fashion, staging performance and installation-based exhibitions at New York’s MoMa PS-1 and Art Basel Miami. He previously collaborated with the iconic French jeweler on a project at Salone del Mobile in Milan last year.

The Juste un Clou was created in the Seventies by Cartier designer Aldo Cipullo in New York. Using his concept of hardware as jewelry, Cipullo first created the Love Bracelet, and later the Juste un Clou, which reconceptualizes a nail as a piece of jewelry. In 2017, the brand reimagined Cipullo’s hardware concept with the Ecrou de Cartier, which interprets the head of a nut and screw as a bracelet and ring.

“Cartier expands the offering to further enrich the bold collections by introducing a new slimmer, flexible version of Juste un Clou as well as new iterations of écrou de Cartier,” Abramo said.

The new Juste un Clou is priced from $1,120 to $3,050, with the bracelet offered in yellow and rose gold and the ring in white, yellow and rose gold. The new écrou de Cartier is priced from $2,300 to $6,600 with the bracelet offered in yellow gold and the ring in white, yellow and rose gold. Both collections will be available at Cartier boutiques and on cartier.com.

The Precious Garage is meant to be a multiroom experience. As guests enter on the store’s first floor, a wire frame car will act as a jumping-off point to the experience. On the third floor, visitors will continue on through a classic road trip with garage iconography, using gold surfaces and a mix of glowing neon elements to create a new world for the collections to live. Santiago will use tools of the automobile trade scattered among vitrines laden with jewelry.

After the reveal during NYFW, the installation will be open to the public throughout the month of September, with a traveling pop-up activation that will take the celebration on the road to Nashville and Seattle.

“The Precious Garage by Cartier, our first-ever traveling pop-up experience, will journey to culturally rich cities across the country and engage with diverse, new audiences,” Abramo said.

Activations in each city will immerse guests into the world of Cartier with yet to be revealed experiential touchpoints with designated spaces to try on products and place orders throughout the weekends that the pop-ups run.

The Cartier Precious Garage pop-up experience will be in Nashville from Sept. 14 to 16 and Seattle from Sept. 28 to 30. The Madison Avenue New York installation will be open to the public from Sept. 7 to 26

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