Cartier Skeleton Watch || ساعة كارتييه سكيليتون ℗

The Cartier Santos is one of the most recognisable watches of all time. Even if you've never paid the slightest bit of attention to what's on other people's wrists, we bet you'd be able to recognise it even if you didn't know what to call it. Admittedly, the watch you see here isn't the two-tone steel and gold number most associated with this model range. Nevertheless, this skeletonised Santos de Cartier from 2021 is a cracker, and, best of all, it's on sale right now.

Before we go any further, let's take a little dive into the history of the Santos. You see, the Santos line is of vital importance to Cartier. At one point, it traded blows with the Rolex DateJust, another of this style of watch we like to call smart/casual. Smart/casual watches aren't a real category as such, but you can think of them as able to be gussied up with polishing and applications of gold perhaps, suitable for smart attire, but they still have some robust qualities like a steel or titanium case and reliable movements and are great casual companions.

Back to the Cartier. The story begins with Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont who is credited as being the first person to fly a heavier-than-air craft with an unaided takeoff and a flight distance of over 25m. Santos-Dumont was friends with Louis Cartier, who ran a little-known jewellery company called De Beers. Nah, just kidding, it was Cartier, but you knew that, didn't you?

Santos-Dumont spoke about the impracticality of using a pocket watch while operating an aeroplane, something which Cartier sympathised with. As such, he got to work designing a watch to be worn on the wrist, thereby avoiding the fumbling into pockets feeling for your pocket watch. This wasn't the first known wristwatch; that claim goes to Breguet, who made a one-off watch for the Queen of Naples in the early 19th century. The watch Louis Cartier made was the first commercially-produced men's wristwatch, and it was called the Santos-Dumont. One would be worn by the man himself on his historic flight in 1906, but it would be a full five years before the Santos-Dumont went into regular production.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of notable media on the Santos (note the name change) until the 1970s when the quartz crisis arrived. Presumably, the model saw enough success to keep it afloat but didn't break away from the pack in terms of sales. The period from the 70s to the 90s was a rough time for all watchmakers as cheaper and more accurate quartz watches turned the quiet mechanical watch industry on its head. Luckily, the Santos pulled through, probably due partly to the ruckus created by Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe when they introduced their steel sports watches penned by Gérald Genta. This is also around the time the Santos went blow-for-blow with the DateJust and, well, it