Mathilde Laurent

Mathilde Laurent is the House of Cartier’s in-house perfumer. After having worked for Guerlain for 10 years, she joined the jeweler Cartier in 2005. She creates custom-designed fragrances for the brand, as well as ones with a broader audience, like their recent Roadster. In November 2009, the ‘Les Heures de Parfum’ collection is being launched. This prestigious series of fragrances will gradually be extended until it reaches 13 unisex scents, each corresponding to a specific moment, a particular hour of the day…

Mathilde Laurent, besides yourself, who would you have liked to be?
We all receive a body and a spirit…it’s up to each of us to be as happy as we can with them!

Your first encounter with fragrance ?
Unawares, but probably with the perfume Madame Rochas.

What’s the very first scent you ever wore?
Grès’s Cabochard. A leathery chypre.

Your favorite smell ?
The smell of grass fires out in the country.

Your favorite flower ?
Narcissus, which isn’t strictly speaking a floral smell, but more of a green and leathery note. I don’t like flowers except when they’re ‘live’.

Your favorite fragrance components ?
Patchouli, iris, Key lime, Seville orange-tree petitgrain, cis 3 hexenol (N.B. the smell of cut grass), ethylene brassylate (N.B. a synthetic musk)…

What fragrance by a different designer do you wish you had designed ?
Femme de Rochas… THE perfume in my book.

Which Cartier fragrance would you like to have designed ?
Le Baiser du Dragon… A sublime woody scent for women.

What influences you as a designer ?
I would say contemporary art, architecture and photography.

Which perfumer(s) style do you admire ?
Jacques Guerlain for his inventiveness and his vision. And Jean-Claude Ellena for his style, in the broadest sense, i.e. for his creativity, his extraordinary technique, and for his humanity as well.

An artist whose work fascinates you ?
Giuseppe Penone and Andy Goldsworthy, who do exactly the same job as I do. (N.B.: They’re both sculptors working with elements from Nature. Penone is generally seen as belonging to the Arte Povera movement; and Goldsworthy to Land Art).

A travel destination that you really enjoy ?
Psychology. Self-knowledge is the first journey, but also a permanent one. It’s an internal journey, at once essential, exotic and rich.

A fashion designer you particularly enjoy ?
Jean-Paul Gaultier. Always have.

After custom-made perfumery, you designed Roadster, for men, and you have just unveiled a Fine Perfumery collection, ‘Les Heures de Parfum’. Which one brings you the most creative enjoyment?
Since I have the same high standards for design and quality, I get equal enjoyment from them. As far as I’m concerned, only the destination is different.

Which leads us to the next question: are the work methods very different?
No, they’re quite similar. The idea rules. Actually creating it gets involved. Nature messes with it. But in the end, the idea rears its head and takes over once again.

Mathilde Laurent, what is your own personal luxury?
Taking time. Letting things just happen, without planning.