The Devil Also Wears Cartier

At a ceremony honoring Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Meryl Streep did what she has done for decades now: quietly steal the scene. There to celebrate her Devil Wears Prada 2 co-stars as the sequel hits theaters, Streep arrived in characteristically understated fashion. But on her wrist was something far more telling: a delicate Cartier Baignoire, one of the most elegant—and increasingly relevant—watches in Cartier’s catalog.

The Bagnoire is a particularly apt choice for Streep. As the actor behind Miranda Priestly—the peerlessly fashionable editor-in-chief of Runway—famously inspired by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, she’s long embodied a certain idea of impeccable taste. Cartier, with its century-spanning design language and quiet authority, is precisely the sort of brand that character would wear. The Baignoire mirrors that sensibility. It’s elegant without being predictable, iconic without being overexposed, and just unconventional enough to signal real taste. In a room full of stars, it’s the kind of watch that doesn’t demand attention—but inevitably earns it.

Cartier’s design-first philosophy is exactly what’s driving Cartier’s current resurgence. In an era when collectors are increasingly drawn to watches with strong visual identities rather than purely technical appeal, Cartier has reemerged as a dominant force. The numbers back it up: the brand now ranks as the second-largest watchmaker in the world by revenue, behind only Rolex, a position built on the strength of icons like the Tank and Santos—but increasingly fueled by renewed interest in its more sculptural “shaped” watches. Recent auction results and collector behavior suggest that pieces like the Crash and Baignoire are no longer niche curiosities, but central pillars of modern collecting.

The Baignoire is, in many ways, Cartier distilled. Its origins trace back to 1912, when Louis Cartier elongated the traditional round watch into an oval form for Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, a member of Russian nobility. The design would eventually be formalized as the Baignoire in 1957. The name itself—French for “bathtub”—speaks to its soft, curved silhouette, which feels less engineered than drawn. (Lore has it that the design may have taken its shape from VIP seats at the opera rather than from an actual bathtub.) Over the decades, Cartier has played freely with the form: shrinking it into delicate mini models, stretching it into exaggerated Maxi versions, and rendering it in everything from simple yellow gold to full high-jewelry executions dripping in diamonds. Through all those iterations, the core idea has remained intact: a watch that prioritizes shape and proportion over traditional notions of watchmaking bravado.