What downturn? Cartier $250 million collection

By Rachel Sanderson

LONDON (Reuters) - Fear of a global downturn may be stalking the streets, but at home with Cartier the world's super rich are still living it up like maharajas.

The world's leading luxury jeweller has put on sale its largest ever high jewellery collection worth $250 million (124 million pound) unperturbed by turbulence in the financial markets.

For the four-day launch party for 400 top clients, it turned a London townhouse into a maharaja's palace strewn with rose petals as much in recognition of the Asian moneyed elite buoying Cartier's fortunes as India's great jewellery-making tradition.

"We decided really to prove we are the king of jewellers and the jeweller of kings," Cartier Chief Executive Bernard Fornas told Reuters while cradling necklaces heavy with emeralds and rubies and diamonds as big as American quarter dollars.

High jewellery, like haute couture, used to be mainly for show and a means of building a fashion house's brand. Only royalty or the wives of tycoons were willing or able to pay the six or seven figure prices.

But a surge in the population of the world's super rich, boosted by billions of dollars of new money from Russia, China and India, is reshaping the top tier of the luxury industry and keeping its executives upbeat even as global markets stumble.

"China, India and Russia are additional business for us that we didn't have 10 years ago so our resistance is better," said Fornas who has been in charge for five years at Cartier, part of the world's second-largest luxury group Richemont.

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