C Is For CHIC

Dressed in the Maison's initials, the classic C de Cartier bag adopts a whole new personality. Creative Director of Leather Goods Marlin Yuson takes us through the Embroidered Monogram models and how the stylish signature is tailor-made for everyone

- YONG WEI JIAN

What are some of your favourite things about the C de Cartier Embroidered Monogram bags?

Being fabric-based makes it one of the most important milestones for Cartier. We’re aligning ourselves with the times, where everybody is aware of the planet and everything, and we’ve been trying to do something precious with fabric for years. The thing I really like about these bags is that they involved a different type of development and design. I’m used to working with leather goods, so going back to fabrics — which I hadn’t done in a long time — was nice. It was interesting because I got to relearn some of the things I had done in the past.

Tell us about the new embroidered monogram.

We started doing this motif on a fabric as a woven and it came out extremely f lat; there was nothing interesting about it. So I said: ‘You know what? Let’s try to make it richer, more precious.’ That’s when we decided to have the whole thing embroidered. It was also important to me that it was, above all, a motif and not necessarily a monogram, even though we see the monogram in it. That’s why there’s this movement of the “C”s — you may not see [the monogram] immediately unless you recognise it. It was meant to be quite subtle.

There’s also the new east-west shape.