Cartier's Resident Nose On Finding The Meaning Of Life Through Perfumes
What the water gave us.
By Keng Yang Shuen,
The latest fragrance collection from luxury jeweller Cartier, Rivieres de Cartier, is supposed to bottle the powerful essence of water and all its symbolic connotations to life – all while being its most sustainable yet. FEMALE speaks to Mathilde Laurent – the maison’s resident nose since 2005 – on why it’s a scent composed for the times.
How did the idea of creating a trio of fragrances like Rivieres de Cartier come about?
“We had launched Les Epures, which was a collection of olfactory photographs of nature (each was centred around notes like magnolia, lily of the valley and kumquat), last year and I felt that there was a need for more nature. With Covid-19, what we really want is nature and the freshness it brings… And apart from a few notes in Heure Brillante (another Cartier perfume), I had only worked a little around water for Cartier even though it’s something I love, so I really wanted another opportunity to play with it…
The emotions we’re trying to evoke with Rivieres de Cartier are simply those after which each scent is named: Allegresse (French for joy, it contains notes of petitgrain, bergamot and blackcurrant bud), Insouciance (iris and violet) and Luxuriance (fern, oak, rosemary and wild herbs). For me, perfume is a vector of emotions and the river is an allegory of life. I want people to be able to choose what they desire in life. By choosing a Riviere, you’re adding joy, carefreeness or luxuriance to your life.”
What's your creative process like as a perfumer at Cartier?
“We might compare it to the work of a head chef when he decides to create a dish. He starts from his inspiration and will remake the recipe dozens – even hundreds of times – until the taste and cooking are perfect. It’s the same thing with perfume. I will make 50, 100, up to 500 trials sometimes based around the same idea and ingredients until I have achieved the perfect harmony that perfectly reflects my inspiration and characterises Cartier.
Perfume gives us the opportunity to feel aesthetic enjoyment the same way experiencing the world through our eyes and ears allows us to. It can give as much pleasure as music, or paintings or photographs. It also offers the same sense of beauty and discovery as the world of wine or cuisine, which is the art of taste. Perfume is the art of the nose.”
Pictured: Luxuriance contains notes of geranium, fern, lentiscus, oak, rosemary and wild herbs
Rivieres de Cartier is also touted as Cartier's most sustainable perfumes. Tell us more.
“The bottles have been designed to be refillable and are crafted from less heavy glass as part of our efforts to limit our carbon footprint. With the same environmental objective in mind, the cardboard packaging is not only obtained from sustainably managed forests, but also made from one single piece of the material and smaller in size.
And the same is being applied to other perfumes – even those that already exist – to improve their sustainability.” (In addition, the alcohol content of Rivieres de Cartier is fully derived from plant-based ingredients with no artificial colours while the iris concentrate and tuberose or geranium absolute are cultivated and harvested in accordance with environmental requirements.”
Pictured: Allegresse contains notes of tuberose, petit-grain and bergamot
How do you think the pandemic has affected people's relationship with perfume?
“Perfume has always played a very important role in our lives, but it’s often a discipline that’s invisible… Perfume is omnipresent in magazines yet we don’t really talk about it. Wearing perfume has become almost a habit influenced by advertising and norms that we’ve lost the meaning behind it so what I’ve tried to do since starting my career is to reinstate the importance of the sense of smell.
I often say that living is breathing. If you’re not breathing, you’re not living and breathing by default means smelling – so you can’t live without smelling... What purpose does wearing perfume serve? It helps us to feel alive and find joy in living. It gives us an insight into life. Unfortunately, those who have lost their sense of smell because of the pandemic have realised this in a painful way – that when you’re anosmic, you don’t really feel alive anymore.”
Pictured: Insouciance contains notes of irises and violet
A version of this article first appeared in the October 2021 Lifes Is Beautiful edition of FEMALE