Have Wings, Will Soar

Within the Cartier Santos-Dumont lies one of the most enchanting stories ever told about early aviation.

- Celine Yap

One can only imagine the life led by Alberto Santos-Dumont. A national hero in Brazil, he was an aviation pioneer, an inventor and an engineer. A dapper gent, SantosDumont was a scion to a vast coffee empire. He was also a publisher. A designer. A trendsetter. A tastemaker. An influencer. In spite of his diminutive stature, Santos-Dumont left a huge imprint on Parisian society. Parisians knew him as Le Petit Santos and did their best to copy his style of dress which often included high-collared shirts, well-fitting jackets and that signature Panama hat.

In retrospect, Le Petit Santos was a doubly appropriate sobriquet for the aviation enthusiast. It’s one thing to be inspired by beautiful blue skies and quite another to invent something to reach for them. His father was a trained engineer who moved from France to Brazil, and somehow, somewhere, machinery began to fascinate a young SantosDumont. Throughout his life, he was drawn to beautiful mechanical objects, and at one point rode around on a De Dion-Bouton tricycle.

Santos-Dumont also read a lot. Jules Verne novels, in particular, fuelled his imagination and motivated him to chase his dreams. But ultimately the book that nudged him towards his destiny was entitled Andrée and His Balloons. It was an account of Swedish explorer Salomon Andrée’s attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon, as written by the balloon constructors Lachambre and Machuron, and described by Santos-Dumont as “a revelation”.