Style Edit: At Watches and Wonders 2025, Cartier reshaped its horological icons – adding a new Tank Louis Cartier, Tank à Guichets, Panthère jewellery, and Panthère de Cartier and Tressage models

Shape means everything to Cartier’s watchmakers, whose vision, time and again, is grounded in a simplicity of line and respect for proportion. The French jeweller conquered the market for dress watches in the early 20th century with a simple rectangle. Its boxy face flanked by brancards and lugs extending into the bracelet, the groundbreaking 1917 Tank echoed the outline of a World War I tank. Then, when the iconic Panthère, star of rings and bracelets, was let loose in watch form, it was realised as a square with rounded corners.

The Tank has perhaps seen the most renewal over the years, with a plethora of iterations rolling out to excite successive generations. Indeed, the original Tank was reworked just five years on, when the more refined Tank Louis Cartier debuted in 1922 in an elongated rectangular case with softer angles.

Now the 2025 Tank Louis Cartier, available in yellow gold or rose gold, not only extends the sophisticated silhouette but also updates the engine: the watch is larger at 38.1mm by 27.75mm, and is powered by a new in-house mechanical movement with automatic winding.

A Tank like no other commands attention as this year’s coveted Cartier Privé release. Pared back to the extreme in a closed brushed-gold rectangular case interrupted only by two small windows displaying a digital reading of time, the art deco-influenced Tank à Guichets was audacious in 1928, and time has not changed this. It now boasts a new mechanism, the hand-wound 9755 MC calibre, with jumping hours and dragging minutes, but these two units are revealed at apertures at 12 o’clock and six o’clock respectively, just as they were almost a century ago.

Today’s watch comes in three new versions, crafted from yellow gold, rose gold or platinum, but there’s also a limited edition Tank à Guichets encased in platinum with attractive burgundy numerals. Here, the windows are positioned asymmetrically: the hour appears vertically at 10 o’clock and the minutes on a rail track in an inverted arch at four o’clock.

Two further novelties are resplendent odes to the power of the panther in the Cartier universe. The latest Panthère jewellery watch unites the maison’s jewellery and watchmaking arms in a bangle watch that is a sculptural work of art.