Cartier in Sydney, one message only: culture

In Sydney, visiting the Hermitage mansion and the Opera House: Cartier opens to new customers for high jewelry in Australia – the luxury market today responds to only one marketing asset: culture

Sydney: The Hermitage mansion by Justin Hemmes

Rustic and Gothic: when the British arrived in Australia, they elaborated the Victorian style that blazed in their homeland on the scale of a country cottage – instead of the damp, green moors, they had the light and salt of the ocean. The mansion today bears the name Hermitage: it is one of Sydney’s historic buildings, dating back to 1870. It belongs to Justin Hemmes, 52, heir to a family that opened more than a hundred restaurant businesses in Australia – pubs, lodges and the like. The man and the great house are both objects of attention and curiosity – the arrangement of power, wealth, and architecture remains fascinating. 

The garden cuts above a geometric pool, a 1970s split-stone design – and just beyond, downhill, is the beach, which remains public but gives no easy access. Opposite are the city lights, the skyscrapers and the Harbour Bridge, lit up at dusk like fireworks. In Sydney Bay it is wise not to swim at sunset: just as at dawn, when the day turns from light to dark or back, sharks are hungry.

Cartier and the Duchess of Windsor, Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs

The Duchess of Windsor would have been at ease at a party at the Hermitage as well as the few others that the other night in Sydney received an invitation from Cartier: French champagne and caviar to be placed directly on the hollow of the hand between thumb and forefinger and picked up with the tongue. In between the patio and the green garden, the Duke of Windsor would have held a lounge and tribune. Flowers, balconies, red lights and butlers in livery. 

There could also have been a guy like Gunther Sachs – a character appreciated by jewelers – when Brigitte Bardot in 1987 auctioned off her jewelry collection. It is said that Sachs bought back the Cartier piece he gave her. He sent it back to her, reminding Bardot how some hearts could not be dismissed. 

Night descends on Sydney. The sharks are satiated and pacified on the seabed and in their sleep – while at the Hermitage there remain those who danced, between a blue-eyed, round-eyed actress and a soccer player with muscles and buttocks.

Jorn Utzon in 1957, the Sydney Opera House – Cartier and the cultural program

In 1957, Jorn Utzon won the international competition: many architects from around the world tried to get the contract and sign the Sydney Opera House design. Sixteen years later, in 1973, Queen Elizabeth inaugurated the building. Today it appears restored after more than a decade of work and 300 millions dollars. In the front plaza, there is no longer car access. Inside, purple-hued hanging panels project sound along the central axis of the concert hall; other wooden panels, working like a three-dimensional mesh, reduce reverberation and clean up frequencies.

Cartier supports the Sydney Opera House’s cultural program. On a day off for the theater, a Sunday in February, Cartierhosts for a concert that proceeds not on stage, but in the stalls. The maestro conducts from the organ balcony, high as the magician of the Emerald City – two drums open the extreme corners, woodwinds on the front rows, and strings on the boxes. Observers in the center, short-circuiting the difference between client care and culture.

On piano, Van-Anh Nguyen. Four dancers from the Sydney Dance Company perform a choreography by Rafael Bonachela. Soprano Cathy-Di Zhang for Bellini’s Casta Diva. Together on the stage: cabochon rubies, pink and purple sapphires, a crocodile inspired by Maria Feliz’s designs and the Panthers that the Duchess of Windsor so liked – again, with a glass of champagne in her hand.

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Alban du Mesnil du Buisson: director of Cartier in Australia

Cartier’s General Manager in Australia is Alban du Mesnil du Buisson: in less than three years, he has created a consistent market for the High Jewelry collections, pieces that can easily reach values over a million euros. He has succeeded by seeking the building of lasting relationships, in each operation reinforcing a local cultural expression: no need for social media publicity when the network power is human and sincere. A brand like Cartier, expanding overseas, can only succeed through a purpose economy.

Cartier at the Sydney Opera House: jewelry as a safe haven asset

Across from the Opera House, at the pier of what was the old harbor, warehouses, markets and sailors’ rooms, a fifty-meter Perini was moored – at the stern, in the sloping mirror of the Italian shipyard, you could read Rock and Roll. 

Jewelry are store of value, a safe haven asset, that means – the value of a jewel is stable during market fluctuations. Logic dictates that this can subsist for commodities already in their own right – i.e., gold, diamonds and gems – but the data show how, net of this value, a brand reputation cultivated over more than two centuries of history such as this one of Cartier, undiluted today by an excess of digital marketing, knows how to multiply such a value. 

It was her rigor that made her look punk – that’s Louise Bourgeois’ quote: as chance would have it, a solo exhibition of hers is open these very days at the National Gallery in Sydney.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: Dion Lee and The Tay-Tay effect

On the front page, in The Sydney Morning Herald – as well as in the headlines in all the other newspapers, is a photograph of Taylor Swift, who flew from Tokyo to Las Vegas to watch a football game and kiss her boyfriend Travis Kelce. What makes the kiss so noteworthy is the corset Taylor Swift is wearing – a piece by Australian designer Dion Lee. Local press excitement predicts an exponential increase in sales due to The Tay-Tay effect – quote unquote. What emerges is not so much the commercial response, but the national pride of seeing an Australian product on American pop channels. (Meanwhile, Beyonce releases her last single, and reminds everyone where the Tay-Tay effect and Ms. Swift herself come from and where they can return – the title is Texas Hold’em).

The Aboriginal flag and the yes or no referendum

Black and red, with a yellow sun in the center: the Aboriginal flag flies next to the national banner, six stars and the Union Jack. These two flags appear on public buildings, schools and other democratic bodies. One cannot overlook the scandal of the yes-or-no referendum, when seventy percent of the population denied representation of the Aboriginal community in parliament – and this is still why, today, in Australia, producing culture means supporting the expression of native peoples, respect and difference for each community, for every cultural difference.

Bula Bula Corporation’s panels, Christopher Boots’ chandeliers: Cartier sponsors Sydney Biennale

A hand-woven panel: five master craftsmen and eight women worked on it under the Bula Bula Corporation’s tutelage. In size, it is the largest Aboriginal panel the community has ever released. The chandeliers come from Melbourne and are made by Christopher Boots from quartz crystals: one by one they are applied as electrified strips, locked with magnets applied to the base. 

The predominant color is a hot, seething orange in the desert – it is a precise reproduction of the light at sunset at Uluru – where all the postcards of Australia we received until the late 1990s were taken. In Uluru the desert dust kicked up by the wind has a mineral composition that reflects and filters the sun’s slanting rays, setting the eyes ablaze.

All of this is the work by Cartier’s communications department in Australia – the continuous quest to enter, cultivate and catalyze anything that can be defined as Aussie – whether it is a piece of clothing, artwork, a video or a performance at Vivid Sydney, the applied arts festival that this year coincides with the opening of the Biennale – of which, precisely, Cartier is a sponsor and partner.

The shark in Elizabeth Bay: Lauren O’Neill attacked and injured

In the south of the continent, jellyfish are not dangerous – or at least, not as dangerous as those in northern Australia. In Sydney Harbour Bay there is the blue bottle, a kind of jellyfish with long, stinging filaments, «but you get used to these» – Thomas Cocquerel, an Australian actor working in England, tells me as we drive north to Berowra. 

A few weeks ago, a woman was attacked by a shark in Elizabeth Bay – just next to the Opera House and Botanical Gardens. It was eight o’clock in the evening – but part of the population does not hesitate, cruising around the bay in kayaks, diving. Attacks are not frequent, but sharks live and breed the Harbour Bay, in the inlets, beyond the bridge. This is where the organic residues of the rains and woods attract the small fauna on which sharks feed. They are the Bull Sharks, those that attack. The injured woman in Elizabeth Bay’s name is Lauren O’Neill – a veterinarian was nearby and stopped her blood loss. O’Neill is out of danger and has suffered no lingering damage to her limbs.

Berowra Waters Inn: Candice Lake with Alban du Mesnil and her community of artists in Sydney: Vicki Lee, Eva Galambos, Alycia Debnam-Carey among the many

In a boat we crossed the river. A gathering of friends was hosted at the Berowra Waters Inn by Candice Lake, who returns from London to Sydney every winter. She left for Europe when she was nineteen, arriving in Milan to work as a model. Today, her children are little more than teenagers: the eldest of the two is building a wooden boat to sail to Australia and stays there not only for vacations. 

To Candice’s right is Alban du Mesnil – this breakfast is also part of Cartier’s cultural program in Sydney. Candice wants to lead the rhythm of words, finds a balance between pleasantries and talents like English socialites still know how; she manages to create a sense of an artistic community on the other side of a world. Thirty people and a line of red roses for women: artists like Vicki Lee, entrepreneurs like Eva Galambos, actresses like Alica Debnam Carey – among the few.

This morning, the haze had not allowed the seaplanes to fly – now, at the end of the afternoon, the forecast is good and the aircraft are docked at the pier to return to Sydney in less than half an hour. After takeoff, the route follows the river to the ocean. Flying back to the city, we descend along the coast, surrounded by cliffs, beaches, houses, and meadows that seem to fall from them. 

Among the rocks, where the waves break, saltwater pools are counted. There are at least a hundred of them – all of these pools that are nothing more than concrete enclosures between the rocks. Water comes in and out with every froth burst, and three types of blue collide. 

The seaplane veers left, enters Harbour Bay – I wonder how much I would like a shark circling the bay – the seaplane bows in front of the Harbour Bridge, and then lands past the Opera House.

Carlo Mazzoni