Teddy Baldassarre
Cartier Crash: The Ultimate Guide to the Oddball Icon
As the enduring popularity of pre-worn and “distressed” denim should prove, fashion sometimes embraces wear and tear, or at least the illusion of such, as a bold stylistic statement. The phenomenon can also occasionally be found, albeit perhaps less overtly, in the world of watches. Consider the fascinating case of the Cartier Crash, a watch whose wildly unconventional, “banged-up” shape has made it not just a curiosity but one of the world’s most collectible timepieces - a quirky icon from a watchmaker with no shortage of iconic designs to its credit. The Crash has been around, mostly floating along the periphery of the watch-industry mainstream, since the 1960s, in various iterations, and while it has never achieved the household-name popularity of Cartier watches like the Tank and Santos, it has also never really gone out of style, either. Here is a primer on the Cartier Crash, and perhaps even a little insight on how it has stayed relevant in the marketplace, nearly six decades after its debut. Photo: Bonhams Let’s start at the beginning, with one of the main sources of the Crash’s multigenerational appeal, its decidedly lurid and now-debunked origin story. As legend had it, the Crash’s curvy, bent case design was inspired by a fatal automobile accident: the owner of a Cartier Baignoire Allongé - an oval-cased watch, example above - was wearing it when he perished in a fiery car crash (hence the name) and the watch, once recovered from the wrecka...
