Tiaras, tutti frutti, and timelessness: Cartier’s world at the V&A

At the Victoria & Albert Museum in London this summer, the house of Cartier stages not just a jewellery retrospective, but a sweeping visual atlas of global influence, personal legacy, and craft history. Titled ‘Cartier’—now sold out for weeks—chronicles a century of design through more than 300 glittering objects that traverse continents and castles, palaces and ateliers. Curated by Helen Molesworth, senior jewellery curator at the V&A and lead curator of the exhibition, and Rachel Garrahan, project curator, the show opens up the Cartier vaults like never before, telling stories not just of opulence, but of aesthetic collaboration and transcultural exchange. 

 

From the Manchester Tiara made for an English duchess in 1903 to the modernist panther brooches beloved by Wallis Simpson, the exhibition charts Cartier’s remarkable ascent as both a tastemaker and a chronicler of the 20th century. It begins with the maison’s “three temples”—its Paris, London, and New York subsidiaries—and expands outward, following the travels of Jacques Cartier as he forged relationships with Indian maharajas and Middle Eastern nobility. The highlight for many: A black natural pearl bracelet made for Maharani Sita Devi of Baroda, discovered through a previously unseen 1950s drawing from Cartier’s London archives. In another vitrine, a Tutti Frutti necklace—a riot of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires—sparkles as testament to the dynamic Indo-French aesthetic that continues to shape jewellery design today.

Bazaar India sat down with Molesworth to chart Cartier’s global eye—and Indian ties—that redefined jewellery design for a century.

Read excerpts from the interview below:

Akanksha Kamath: What did you hope the younger generation would take away from this exhibition?

Helen Molesworth: The thing I wanted the most was for people to feel connected to the objects. It’s very easy, firstly in a museum, to feel as if you are looking in a gallery...you’re removed from objects by glass, by a certain elitism. And of course, we’ve got really spectacular, very high-end jewels and objects that might feel as if they’re a world away from people. I love jewellery because it’s something that we touch, we feel—it’s on our bodies. It means something personal. There’s a huge emotional connection with jewels.

If I could handle jewellery with people day-to-day and show them what it feels like, they’d understand the depth of the purpose of these objects. So we really wanted people to feel when they walked into the exhibition that they were either connecting to these objects as closely as possible...and that by the stories we told, it didn’t feel like a completely different world.

AK: The India story feels particularly compelling. What did Cartier’s relationships with Indian clients signify during the 20th century?

HM: You realise that the better your clients, the bigger they can grow—the better your jewels and your objects and the more artistically valuable and brilliantly innovative they are, the more clients you’re going to get. And then the more the business grows.

By the 1920s and ’30s, the Maharajas were turning to Cartier and saying, ‘come and mount up our jewels’. And you realise that it’s a globalisation of epic proportions at this period in history, from a business and a creative perspective.

Baroda bracelet, Cartier London. Special order, 1953, commissioned by Sita Devi, Maharani of Baroda. Natural black pearls, diamonds and platinum, Private Collection
 

AK: You’ve spotlighted some incredible Indian women in the show—Sita Devi of Baroda, for instance.

HM: She was jet-set, she was glamorous, and she loved jewels. She brought Cartier her own black pearls—natural black pearls, which are incredibly rare—and Cartier created several bracelet designs for her. We found these drawings in the Frederick Mew Archive—Mew was a designer at Cartier London from the late ’20s to 1971—at the V&A, and I happened to spot them while flipping through photos on my iPhone. I recognised one of the bracelets immediately.

There were five iterations on the page, and in tiny handwriting at the top it read “Maharani of Baroda.” Cartier helped us track down the exact bracelet. It’s a wonderful story because it shows not just a client ordering something, but a true collaboration—the client’s taste influencing the design itself.

AK: And there’s another Sita Devi—of Kapurthala—featured as well?

HM: Yes, we show her wearing an amazing tiara photographed by Cecil Beaton for British Vogue. She was a real fashion icon—so beautiful she was like a model—and her jewellery choices had influences from all over: Indian, Thai, Cambodian. You see Cartier absorbing all these inspirations and synthesising them into something distinctly their own.

Inside the exhibition: Manchester Tiara, Cartier Paris, special order 1903, commissioned by Consuelo, Dowager Duchess of Manchester; diamonds, gold and silver; the C-scroll at each end set with glass paste; © Victoria & Albert Museum, London

AK: Was Jacques Cartier the main point of connection between Cartier and India?

HM: Jacques was really important. He travelled to India for the first time in 1911 for the Delhi Durbar, and he fell in love with the arts of India. He built relationships with maharajas—not just commercially, but emotionally. You see him write in the biography of the Maharaja of Nawanagar that they started as business partners and became friends.

The Maharajas would bring him rubies, emeralds, and pearls from their treasuries and ask Cartier to mount them. So you get this beautiful blend: European Deco lines meeting Indian bib necklace formats. I don’t see Paris “using” Indian influence or India “borrowing” Parisian technique—it’s a genuine partnership. 

AK: Tutti Frutti is arguably one of Cartier’s most iconic styles. Where does that sit in the India story?

HM: ‘Tutti Frutti’ is fascinating. Jacques started bringing back carved Indian emeralds and rubies, and Cartier adapted that style for their European and American clients—often adding sapphires, which weren’t so prevalent in Indian jewellery because of astrological reasons.

Now, everyone knows the name Tutti Frutti. But it was born from these Indian gems and motifs, and it became something universal. That’s one of the great things about jewellery—it shows how culture, taste, and aesthetics travel.

 

From left to right: Hindu necklace, Cartier Paris, special order, 1936, altered in 1963. Platinum, gold, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies. Made as a special order for Mrs Daisy Fellowes. Cartier Collection; Mountbatten Bandeau in Tutti Frutti style, Cartier London, 1928. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, diamonds and platinum, © Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Necklace, Cartier, 2024. Platinum, emeralds, sapphires and rubies, onyx, diamonds. Private Collection

AK: How do you hope Indian visitors in particular connect with the exhibition?

HM: I don’t want people to feel distanced from it. I want them to feel part of the story. Indian visitors especially—I’d love for them to look at the jewellery and think:“I know what that is. That reminds me of my grandmother’s necklace” or “That looks like something I’ve seen at a wedding.”

Jewellery is deeply personal.You might not be wearing a Cartier tiara, but maybe you’re wearing a ring passed down in your family. It’s all connected. That’s why we tell these stories—because they remind us that jewellery isn’t just about wealth or status. It’s about emotion, identity, and memory.

 

From left to right: Stomacher Brooch, Cartier Paris. Special order, 1913. Carved rock crystal, diamonds and platinum. Cartier Collection; Star of the South diamond bracelet, Cartier, 2002. Platinum, 128.48-carat cushionshaped diamond (The Star of the South), diamonds. Private Collection; Rose clip brooch, Cartier London. Special order 1938, diamonds and platinum, Provenance: HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, Cartier Collection

AK: You mentioned how Cartier made the world smaller—what do you mean by that?

HM: Cartier brought the world to their clients. And I hope that’s what we’ve done with this exhibition.Today we take global access for granted—we hop on a plane to India or Japan. But 100 years ago, it was days of boat travel, and yet the Cartier brothers made these journeys, developed these relationships, and brought back the influences and the gems.

Through these jewels, they built bridges between cultures. And I think that’s what jewellery does at its best. It celebrates what we have in common—our love for beauty, for memory, for human connection.

This article first appeared in the August-September 2025 issue of Harper's Bazaar India.

All images: Courtesy Cartier and Victoria & Albert Museum

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