Cartier in-house Perfumer since 2005, Mathilde Laurent seeks to elevate perfumery to its highest level of excellence and to find a worthy means of expression in perfume to Maison Cartier’s audacious and creative style. Fragrance after fragrance, she reveals her vision: to escape consensus and spark emotions.

3 QUESTIONS TO MATHILDE LAURENT

Q1. WHAT APPEALS TO YOU MOST ABOUT BEING A PERFUMER ?

I’m fascinated by the artistic and human aspects of perfumery. First, it’s the creation: making new things, inventing, expressing myself through what I find beautiful, and making perfumery not only a business but an art.

Then, the purpose is to touch others. We are moved by scents. When I’m working on my creations and I smell something that I like, everyone knows it because it makes me jump around! I am filled with the scent and I make everyone else smell it, too. I have the impression that I have touched on something – a kind of infinity, a harmony – and that I have almost equaled nature. It’s the same feeling of fulfilment as when you are in a beautiful landscape. It’s a communion with nature and a state of grace that I need to share with others to be able to commune with them. So when a person wears a perfume I  created, we share it together.

Q2. IS THERE A SPECIAL TOUCH, A MATHILDE LAURENT “SIGNATURE”?

Using flagship ingredients to the point of overdose and placing the least number of superfluous

things around them. It’s simplicity that creates emotion. While others work with masses of ingredients,

I like having “soloists” surrounded by a choir. Also, imagine having a quintet and adding a muted melody behind it, or playing an iconoclastic instrument like a synthesizer together with string instruments. I like contrast, and binding things that are contradictory from the start.

Q3. WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT BEING AN IN-HOUSE PERFUMER? HOW DOES IT DIFFER FROM BEING A PERFUMER WHO WORKS OUTSIDE OF A MAISON?

When a Maison chooses to have a perfumer, such as Cartier, it chooses to have a creator who is

immersed in the day-to-day of their story, their style, their vision of luxury. The in-house perfumer is a very particular role. We must think about scents and perfumes which profoundly correspond to the Maison for whom we are creating an olfactory style. It must be recognizable and utterly specific to that Maison. It’s trying to produce something that is impalpable: if someone smells one of my creations and identifies that it is a Cartier perfume, that is my grail.