Necklace – Galanterie de Cartier. Dress – Jonathan Simkhai

It’s not a secret that we – namely Millenials, the ‘Y’ or Peter Pan generation – have a thirst for summaries, a Cliff’s Notes version of unashamedly long, winding, heart-breaking-and-waking stories with valiant heroes and fearless heroines. How many times has J.K Rowling lifted and dropped our hearts with every page turn? Heck, now it’s all about 140-character notes and #nofilter squares that somehow boil down to a point when squinted hard enough, and those blasted abbreviations, because there’s no time at all to LOL IRL since YOLO, apparently. So you’ll agree, stories are worth its weight in gold, or diamonds.

London saw, in its final week of November, a hailstorm of leaves that left the city’s canopies bare and vulnerable to the elements. And snow it did, in the form of a Le Diamant, a private exhibition at Philips displaying rare, diamond-clad treasures from the Cartier archive as part of its travelling Tradition collection and the new art-deco inspired range Galanterie de Cartier. It was by sheer chance that we caught the spectacle.

LOVE Bracelet, Pink and white gold diamonds

If love is fleeting, haphazard and possibly a string of coincidences, according to Kundera (The Unbearable lightness of being, 1984), then this must be love – this implausible set of accidents that have led for the Galanterie de Cartier necklace to be looped around my neck, and thus being a part of the Cartier story, albeit for a fleeting moment.

The Pur Absolu necklace worn by Karen Elson in the dazzling Christmas campaign, along with the Tradition collection, will be on sale in Cartier New Bond Street boutique for a month.

Above: Core range in diamonds. Left: Necklace – Galanterie de Cartier. Dress – Jonathan Simkhai