By Rachel Sanderson

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - 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 jeweler has put on sale its largest ever high jewelry collection worth $250 million 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 jewelry-making tradition.

"We decided really to prove we are the king of jewelers and the jeweler 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 jewelry, 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.

GO EAST

Cartier is not the first luxury house to look east. A Japanese or Chinese aesthetic has starred in collections from Giorgio Armani to Aquascutum, while the craze for embroidery and pattern filling runways owes a debt to India.

The reasoning is clear: the wealth of the world's richest people -- who have at least $1 billion ready to invest -- rose to $32.7 trillion last year, up 11.4 percent, with China and India leading the way, the latest Merrill Lynch Cap Gemini World Wealth Report showed.

Richemont, Cartier's parent company, posted an 11 percent increase in its sales from April to August with its business in Asia growing fastest ratcheting up a 22 percent rise.

At Cartier, artisans inspired by the jewelry of India's Mughals and maharajas took three years and thousands of diamonds and precious stones to create more than 500 one-of-a-kind pieces costing from 200,000 euros to 20 million euros ($28 million).

Several pieces from the "Mysterious India" collection were sold the first day of their launch last week, Fornas said without giving more detail. It will now be presented to clients at private dinners across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

And while the house will follow rivals Boucheron and Bulgari and test the sale of some jewelry by Internet, providing personal service remained Cartier's future.

"What rich people want is real luxury and that's the art of being unique. If you buy a handbag, there are thousands that are exactly the same. But you are the only one when you buy this," Fornas said, holding to the light a 1.6 million euro "Tutti Frutti" necklace glinting with diamonds, and red and green gems.