By Divya Balakrishnan
There’s a scene in the 1958 technicolour musical Gigi where Aunt Alicia walks her young niece through what looks less like a jewellery box and more like a lesson. 鈥淎 topaz? Among my jewels? Are you mad?鈥 she exclaims, scandalised, when Gigi misidentifies a yellow diamond. She teaches her the cuts鈥攅merald, pear, marquise鈥攚hich kings preferred which gems and how only the most beautiful emeralds contain that elusive blue flame darting within the green. 鈥淲ithout knowledge of jewellery, my dear Gigi, a woman is lost.鈥
While first judged by its quality and visual appeal, what truly sets a piece apart, as Aunt Alicia explains, is its provenance. Who wore it, where it travelled and what moment in history it witnessed. It鈥檚 that last layer that I was thinking about in London as I walked into the Victoria & Albert Museum鈥檚 (V&A) new exhibition: a display of more than 350 artefacts that stitched together the story of Cartier鈥檚 dominion. 鈥淭he jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers,鈥 King Edward VII called them. Within the vast stone belly of the museum lay proof of that reign.
It was one of those rare London days鈥攂right and dry, with spring sun and a lingering chill鈥攕o I鈥檇 already witnessed my first luxury sighting of the day: good weather. The exhibit began with the Manchester Tiara, a lattice of diamonds set in delicate platinum, and ended, appropriately, in a cathedral of crowns.
And what a cathedral. The final room had been designed as a dreamscape: a glass vault where a Cartier tiara floated on a man-made cloud. Classical music drifted through the air as I moved between all the tiaras on display, some lent by the Royal Family and the Duchess of Windsor. Gone was the predictable split: men fawning over swords while women ogled the diamonds. Cartier, for all its technical brilliance and legacy polish, had somehow preserved the essential fact of jewellery: its power to be an egalitarian language.
Something else shimmered through the exhibit: a deep connection to India. It was in the early sketches of gemstones, the pieces Jacques Cartier had brought back from his many visits to the country (beginning with the 1911 Delhi Durbar), in the legends that curled around the Patiala necklace, in the explosion of colour in Cartier鈥檚 Tutti Frutti pieces.
The dazzling Patiala necklace, with its ropes of diamonds, was once draped across the Maharaja of Patiala鈥檚 chest. Now, it flickered in an ochre light, accompanied by a looped film of the maharaja moving through another world. The architect Asif Khan, whose design guided the show, had chosen the exhibit鈥檚 colour shift with care: moving from royal blue to a deep, dusky orange, mirroring sunset over Delhi.
Indian royalty found many mentions in the exhibit. Rani Sita Devi of Kapurthala, photographed by Cecil Beaton for British Vogue in 1934, was pictured wearing a tiara and heavy bracelet. She was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world. I believe it.
Nearby, a sketch of the Maharaja of Nawanagar鈥檚 ceremonial diamond necklace served as a quiet warning: nothing鈥攏ot even grand jewels鈥攍asts forever. The original had been dismantled, its stones scattered. Only Cartier鈥檚 dream of it lingered, resurfacing decades later as a ghost cameo around Anne Hathaway鈥檚 neck in Ocean鈥檚 8.
Other rooms left their quiet impressions: the clock gallery, where only the soft ticking of Cartier鈥檚 mystery clocks could be heard. Another held a paper forest鈥攅ntirely handmade, entirely white鈥攁 stage for the evolution of Cartier鈥檚 most enduring motif: the panth猫re.
A darker chamber revealed Mar铆a F茅lix鈥檚 snake necklace, coiled like an ancient deity, watched over by a holographic serpent slithering across the dark walls. Cartier does not deal in half measures. This was extravagance honed into discipline, fantasy sharpened to a fine point. Jewellery carries a strange, spectral energy; it survives its owners and outlasts their memories. It wears us as much as we wear it. Fabric softens and frays with our bodies, but jewels remain cool and untouched. This exhibition reminded me that magnificent jewels belong to no one. We are only ever their temporary keepers.
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