Cartier Digs Into Its Archives to Reimagine a Coveted Classic Collection With an Unlikely Coffee Bean Inspiration

For Cartier’s grand reintroduction this month of its Grain de Café jewelry collection, the luxury maison channeled the golden age of cinema and the chic opulence of Cóte d’Azur in the 1950s. 

Launched in 1938, for this collection Cartier’s legendary creative director Jeanne Toussaint found unlikely inspiration in a coffee bean. Decades later, Grain de Café became a major hit when the screen siren Grace Kelly wore the creations—including several given to her by Prince Rainier III for their wedding—on a French Riviera jaunt. After its 1960s peak, Grain de Café stopped being produced and the series became coveted collectors’ pieces. Cartier has now brought the collection back with a reimagined, limited-edition suite of new designs and a reissue of a 1955 necklace. A study in sparkle and movement, the collection combines sensuality and mobility. It took 30 craftsmen to create the intricate pieces.

To mark the occasion, the heritage house enlisted photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager—who has captivated art and fashion audiences with her canny takes on cinematic tropes—to direct a glamorous campaign harking back to classic Hollywood productions. Across the series, a bewitching blonde played by Elle Fanning (and recalling Alfred Hitchcock’s leading ladies) embodies the insouciant spirit of the era. Thanks to her distinctive, sophisticated style defined by elaborately staged cinematic scenes, Prager— steeped in the Los Angeles film industry since childhood—was a natural fit to devise this modern riff on midcentury motion pictures and the South of France. 

Prager’s aesthetic also resonated with the codes of the collection. Mixing engraved gold beads with inlaid obsidian, princess-cut diamonds, and cabochon rubellites, Grain de Café is designed to elevate everyday motifs with precious materials and exceptional craftsmanship. By leveraging her expertise with light, Prager brilliantly illuminated Cartier’s exquisite jewelry and what it represents: celebrating beauty in the unexpected, as Toussaint always sought—even in an object as ordinary as a coffee bean.