MICHELINE KANOUI - CARTIER’S OWN GEM
The main Web site of freelance writer
Jeremy Josephs is at www.jeremyjosephs.com Please check there if you might be interested in
engaging him as a writer. Many of his articles are available online. Please
check the sitemap for a complete list.
All rights belong to Jeremy Josephs.
Permission is granted to make and distribute complete verbatim electronic
copies of this item for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright
information and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. All other
rights reserved. To correspond with the author, send email to josephs@crit.univ-montp2.fr Comments welcome.
Question: why should a 62-year-old Swiss
grandmother and former shop assistant make it her business to travel from
Geneva to Paris twice a week? Answer: in order to oversee the running of
Cartier’s jewellery workshops in the French capital, of course. Micheline
Kanoui, who is proud to point out that she has no formal training in art,
jewellery or design whatsoever, has risen steadily through the ranks and now
leads a 190-strong team which supplies immaculately crafted pieces of Cartier
jewellery to the company’s 189 boutiques around the world. Not bad for a woman
who claims to have been perfectly happy in her role as both mum and housewife.
That was until a part time job in Cartier’s Geneva branch happened to come her
way back in the early seventies.
"I was good with the customers on the
shop floor", Cartier’s creative director of jewellery relates, "and I
soon began to take special orders. In fact I designed the first Panther
necklace ever made by Cartier. I travelled to Paris and worked on the design
myself. I am simply doing what I love - designing jewellery. I believe that its
something that you are born with. In fact I think that I must have spent the
greater part of my childhood trying on my mother’s jewellery - and my
grandmother’s for that matter too. And I still derive that childlike pleasure
from my job, even though you could say that I have gone much more
up-market!"
The legendary Cartier firm was founded back
in the middle of the nineteenth century by Louis-François Cartier in the
workshop of his former employer Adolphe Picard. Almost immediately he
established a reputation for creating jewellery for the rich and famous - his
clients including Princess Mathilde, a niece of Napoleon I and the Empress
Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. Its a distinguished if somewhat daunting heritage
of which Kanoui is acutely aware and anxious to respect. Indeed, it was from
the main Cartier site in Paris, at number 13, rue de la Paix, where Kanoui has
a plush suite of offices overlooking the Place Vendome, that the Prince of
Wales uttered the phrase that remains famous to this day. "Cartier",
he declared, "jeweller of kings and king of jewellers". Talk about
the Royal seal of approval. It has been the same story of extravagance and
excess ever since. Indeed one Indian Maharajah, the proud owner of 250 Cartier
clocks and watches, employed a person whose sole occupation was to wind them. A
full time employee you might even say.
A perfectionist extraordinaire, Kanoui
has been known to make up to 300 sketches before giving the official green
light for a particular project to proceed. Which means that a specially
commissioned hand-made piece can take anything up to eighteen months to
produce. Hardly surprising, in a sense, when you pause to think that many of
her items will retail for several hundreds of thousands of US dollars. In fact
the majority of Cartier boutiques are so posh that the small detail of the
retail price rarely features on the item at all.
The hallmark of Kanoui’s work is fluidity and
movement. "Because women, nowadays are on the move", she explains.
"They work, they drive, they travel. My jewellery has to show similar
flexibility - we must have fluidity like a fabric."
But are there not occasions, one hesitates to
ask, when she is a little turned off by such overt displays of conspicuous
consumption? No, there are not.
"Never", she declares, staring at
her interlocutor as if he had taken leave of his senses. "We need rich
people. They create employment. In my view there can be no excess. On the
contrary, I bless them - because they buy. Why should we restrain ourselves -
we are only on this earth once."
For Kanoui the production process begins with
the design drawings, from a preliminary sketch incorporating a client’s
specifications to a detailed colour design showing her finished interpretation.
What, though, is the source of her inspiration?
"Your imagination is always working,
always alert, rather like a radar. Nothing is organized at all. Its complete
chaos - its almost as if I need the madness. In fact I create best when working
under a deadline. I might see a flower or a tree, someone’s step, a beautiful
woman - anything. When you are ready, when your eyes are open, then you will
capture things. When I see something I know immediately if I like it. That
something that comes from your heart - pure emotion - although of course we
then have to go on to cost the piece."
And what does she think that the great, late
Louis Cartier would have had to say about her creations?
"Well", she replies thoughtfully,
"working for this firm for almost a quarter of a century I feel that I
have come to know him. You have to understand him. Its a kind of marriage -
entering into another family.
A happy marriage?
"Well I would like to think so. I think
that if Louis Cartier were to walk in here right now he would probably say that
I had done well. And that is how I would like to be remembered - as someone who
made beautiful things in her own right, whilst at the same time respecting the
work and spirit of Louis Cartier."
She must certainly be doing something right.
For under her stewardship Cartier has gone from strength to strength, the
company doing very well indeed thank you. In fact Cartier not only managed to
survive the recession of the 1980s, its products were actually more in demand
than ever before, as investors rushed to place their money in diamonds and
gold. And as anyone attending an auction at Christie’s or Sotheby’s will tell
you, investing in a Cartier product over the long term, is the gemological
equivalent of a license to print money.
"Of course I am proud of what I have
achieved", Kanoui says with a grin. "I am a hard worker, mind you.
And I am not shy to put in a 15 hour day. I also have a fantastic team to work
with - the head of the orchestra - that’s how I describe myself. But you must have
humility and you must remain receptive to new ideas. Above all, though, you
must respect your customers and respect the marque. At the moment I am busy
preparing my new collection which is due out next year. I hope that it will
surprise people."
"You do know how to pronounce my name,
don’t you?", Cartier’s artistic director calls out almost as an after
thought. The interview is over and I am about to set off back towards the Place
Vendome, the centre of the jewellery trade in France, my eyes still dazzling
from the size and scale of the diamonds I have seen and having reason to be
grateful that my wife had not accompanied me on this particular trip. "Its
Kanoui - in English it sounds like ‘Can We.’
Might that be a metaphor for your approach to
creating for Cartier, I ask.
"You could say that yes. Because when a
customer asks ‘Can We?’ - I always make of point of replying ‘Yes, We Can.’
The main Web site of freelance writer Jeremy
Josephs is at www.jeremyjosephs.com Please check there if you might be interested in
engaging him as a writer. Many of his articles are available online. Please
check the sitemap for a complete list.