Carat is the latest diamond-inspired fragrance by Cartier perfumer Mathilde Laurent

Parisian jewellery house Cartier has released a new fragrance aptly named Carat by perfumer Mathilde Laurent, who wanted to “create a fragrance that shimmers with all the fire of a diamond”.

Laurent, Cartier’s first female in-house perfumer and creative director, has been described as born to be a “nose”.

Since joining Cartier in 2005, besides developing the maison’s mainstream fragrances, she is also responsible for creating the collection of High Perfumery Les Heures de Parfum (2009), Baiser Volé (2011) and La Panthère (2014), and credited with developing fragrances for Guerlain.

With her passionate, assertive character, Laurent stands for signature fragrances unfettered by norms and conventions, favouring the imagination and elegance of a scent.

Cartier’s olfactory creation is deeply anchored in the jewellery territory and with this fragrance pays tribute to the house’s legacy, through its purest and finest representation: the diamond.

It is the diamond’s radiance that inspired and fascinated Laurent. As she worked, she became obsessed not just with diamonds but also with their ability to catch and play with light. She turned that magic into flowers, selecting violet for purple, iris for indigo, hyacinth for blue, ylang-ylang for green, daffodil for yellow, honeysuckle for orange and tulip for red.

The bouquet of flowers is what she calls “Arcs-en-fleurs” – a true flowering rainbow.

“It occurred to me to apply the principle of diffraction to the fragrance: dispersed light appears as flashes of rainbow colours in a diamond. And so, I chose seven beautiful fresh flowers that come together to form a new flower, abstract but alive, like the light of the diamond,” said Laurent.

Inspired by art deco, the jewel-cut bottle with its many square-cut glass facets captures the light and refracts it into myriad colours.

The scent is a bright floral fragrance – seven colourful flowers that combine to make one pure scent, Carat Cartier, a fragrance that immediately invokes the visual radiance of a diamond.

This article was paid for by Cartier.