Perfumer Mathilde Laurent has created scents which smell like the freshest of garden roses, dewy kumquats, and shiny watches. You might think that this project for Laurent, whose job is to create beautiful fragrances for Cartier as their in-house perfumer, would be the equivalent of vacation time or a chance to embrace idleness. It turned out that making nothing from something was quite difficult.
Les Bases a Parfumer is a new way to customize how you smell. It is a DIY way to perfume yourself, including L’Huile Pure (an unscented body oil), La Crème Pure (an unscented body cream), and Les Gouttes de Parfum Concentré (perfume drops). You can mix the drops, which come in scents like oud and rose, with the unscented oil or body cream to create a personalized body ritual. To create something unscented, actually takes a lot of scents and sense (and new learnings), Laurent found out. Read on to learn about Laurent’s key discovery of the “God oil,” what she considers to be true elegance in perfumery, and why silence in fragrance is sometimes the strongest statement.
What inspired this project?
In my career, I’ve worked a lot, whether I was at Guerlain or Cartier, with creams, body lotions, shower gels, and oils. To make perfume and cream live together, we often had to change both. There was always some regret with that, because they are not made to live together in the sandbox.
I had this idea several years ago to create a totally neutral cream with perfume oil drops. It allows you to put perfume in the primary role, and create a very personal ritual. If you want to wear it like a perfume, you can add the concentrated perfume drops – add up to 10, 20, 30 and you’ll have a perfumed cream. Or you can take your favorite perfume, add the cream, and you’ll be perfumed from the toes to the hair. Or you can also wear the cream without perfume.
You can really play and really adapt. Sometimes you have a perfume and want to feel confident but you don’t want it to be very perceptible. Maybe you are going to a show or an interview. You want to feel fresh and perfumed, but not as if you were going on a date. I hate rules. I really enjoy freedom and I try to offer freedom. This range is really made to offer freedom and match to each occasion of life, because perfume has to match with life. It’s an incredibly sensual way to be perfumed, because even your knees are perfumed, you know?
It’s generous that you are offering something unscented, as a perfumer.
My job is really to offer the right perfume for the right moment. For a perfumer, as for a musician or a photographer, silence—olfactory science is really important. To the public, they probably do think that a perfumer wants more perfume on more people in every place and time. But the only obsession that a perfumer should have is with beauty.
There have been studies which show that when we leave our house in the morning, we have on average 25 different smells on the body. The smell that we think we have, is not the smell we think. It’s our perfume plus our shampoo, our deodorant, our shower gel, our conditioner, our hand sanitizer, our makeup, our cream. The time has come for elegance and silence.
Would you equate something unscented with the way that a pause can be important in music?
Exactly. Because for myself, I cannot wear a face cream which is perfumed. I cannot wear a body lotion which is perfumed to sleep. I cannot sleep with so much perfume. With this, your perfume is the perfume. It is not the cream version or the shower gel version. You put your real perfume, the one and only, the one you choose, and nothing else.
It is really a pause or a choice. You are given the choice of what you want to wear for once. When you buy a shampoo, you choose your type of hair, you choose your effect, but the smell is given. It’s really interesting to free people from non-chosen smells on their body.
Is there a difference between being unscented and fragrance-free?
This is fragrance-free and unscented, because I chose each ingredient without smell. Strangely, fragrance-free products can have a smell, which is the smell of the ingredients. Very often, fragrance-free products have their natural smell, which can be a bit pharmaceutical. Here, you have no smell at all. It’s neutral. So you put it on the skin and you smell nothing other than your skin.
The oil base is something special called Moringa Peregrina oil, which has been called the “God oil,” and was mentioned in the Bible. Jean-Louis Fargeon, who was Marie Antoinette’s private perfumer, described this as an oil that never gets old, never gets wrong, or rancid. This oil has been mentioned to be only for gods and kings, because of its neutrality, and also this incredible capacity to enhance perfume.
This oil had disappeared from the surface of Earth, in fact. It was lost for humanity. But it is back and found in the region of Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia. It’s an incredibly beautiful place, and in the historical, archeological, botanical research and studies that were done there, they found Moringa Peregrina oil. French scientists were sent there and the incredible Elisabeth Dodinet found back these species of Peregrina Moringa. She planted the seeds, and they created farms, to produce this incredible soil. It is a very special tree which grows in extremely poor soil. It can nearly grow on a stone, so it has incredible survival properties. We think that this tree takes the water from the air to grow.
Does your brain feel like it’s working in an opposite direction to create an unscented perfume?
Not really. I have always been conscious of that, of what has to be perfumed, what has to be unscented or virgin. In my work, I have always been a “less is more” artist, I would say. So for me, it was not really a U-turn.
You use the word “enhance” a lot to describe this project, why?
I say enhance because the oil does not absorb perfume. When you put a perfume in an oil, it is less powerful. The perfume is like a prisoner of the oil. But with this one, the Moringa Peregrina, it is really amazing, astonishing, because it behaves more like alcohol with the perfume. You put the perfume in and then it’s wonderful. You smell it really properly, without this absorption of the oil. That is why we use it as a replacement for the alcohol.
How would you describe the Cartier signature when it comes to fragrance?
The Cartier style is always bringing an unexpected accord. We try to create never-smelt-before perfumes, which are yet very familiar and simple. It is simple complexity, as you can see in our Love Bracelet or our nail with the Juste un Clou. It’s extremely simple, and yet, it is totally unusual. It is this kind of oxymoron and contrariness that we try to assemble. Cartier perfumes are very unexpected, but with total classical elegance.
You have the distinction of being one of the few female perfumers, especially at a big house. People talk about male or female gaze often when comes to things like writing or art. Do you feel like there’s a “female gaze” when it comes to perfume or creation of perfume?
Not at all, not at all. For me, perfume has no sex, creation has no sex. When we study perfume history, we can see that previous eras were much more free for the gender, much less gendered, starting at the beginning of the 20th century than we are now. In the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, we have gendered more things so now we have to de-gender things. Until before the Second World War, perfume didn’t have gender. Gender in perfumery is a marketing invention for the public and buyer. It was this intention to describe and to present the products. Before World War Two, people were wearing perfumes as they wanted.
You talk a lot about elegance in perfume, how do you think elegance in perfume comes out?
Elegance is the choice. Elegance is to choose the perfume that you love, not the perfume that you think is right for you. Often, a female will not dare to wear a male perfume, even if they have a real love at first sight for it. You are elegant when you love your perfume so that it carries you. It accompanies you. It gives you a kind of je ne sais quoi, of something more, because you love it and you feel at ease with it. Elegance begins with a really daring choice, and not wearing what everybody’s wearing. Nowadays, you have so many trends in perfumery, which is good, but if you don’t love this trend, please do not wear it. You don’t have to be “socially correct.” Any perfume is socially correct. You feel more elegant when you wear a perfume that gets you stopped in the street or in the subway. It’s something that makes you feel that you have something rare and exceptional, but it’s not only your appearance but that your spirit is also enhanced.