Christie’s Geneva sale features Gatsby Cartier sautoir, Art Deco icons

Christie’s is putting a 1925 Cartier emerald-and-pearl sautoir at the center of its Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva, and the necklace’s appeal is as much cinematic as it is gemological. The jewel, scheduled for auction on 13 May 2026 at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues, was worn by Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker in the 1974 film The Great Gatsby, turning a singular Art Deco object into a piece of screen history with instant recognition.

The necklace was created by Cartier New York in 1925 as a special commission for one of the maison’s most important clients, who already owned the carved emerald at its heart. That central stone weighs 86.71 carats and is carved with Shiva and Parvati, a detail that gives the sautoir a distinctly devotional character beneath its flapper-era polish. Christie’s has set an estimate of CHF 240,000 to 400,000, or about US$310,000 to 510,000, a range that reflects both the rarity of the stone and the layered provenance that now surrounds it.

What makes the piece especially compelling is the way film wardrobe history has amplified its meaning. Theoni V. Aldredge, who won the Academy Award for her work on The Great Gatsby, worked closely with Cartier and longtime house designer Alfred Durante to assemble the production’s jewelry wardrobe. That collaboration gave the necklace a second life beyond the Paris-New York taste of the 1920s, fixing it in the visual memory of one of Fitzgerald’s most enduring heroines, Jordan Baker, as played by Lois Chiles.

Christie’s is framing the sautoir alongside another circa-1925 Art Deco necklace by Boucheron, underscoring how the sale is being curated as a small survey of the era rather than a simple showcase of high prices. The pairing matters. It places Cartier’s emerald, pearls, emerald beads and diamonds in direct conversation with another historic maison and makes the sale feel less like a grab bag of treasures than a study in the century-long afterlife of Art Deco design.

For today’s buyer, the draw is not only the scale of the emerald or the cachet of the Cartier signature. It is the chain of documented ownership, design authorship and film provenance, the kind of record that turns a vintage necklace into an aspirational reference point for heirloom-style glamour. In a market crowded with vague heritage claims, this one has the receipts, and then some.