Cartier used to be a Timpson’s for the rich
In the fall of, I suppose, 1962, my friend Jimmy Davison and I, window shopping on Fifth Avenue, bumped into the glamorous Venezuelan playboy-grandee Reinaldo Herrera. Jimmy asked where he was going. ‘I’m just nipping into Cartier. They’re fixing my skis,’ Reinaldo replied. Autres temps, autre moeurs. I doubt anyone today uses the world’s most famous jewellers as their local Timpson’s, though I suspect Cartier’s unrivalled in-house craftsmen could still run up a supple sapphire USB cable if requested. I doubt anyone today uses the world’s most famous jewellers as their local Timpson’s Because that was partly the firm’s point. Apart from the staggering banque-busting biggies, they, almost uniquely, made
