This is my final post on Les Heures. I don’t think I’ve ever approached a closed body of artistic work with as much anticipation. As I explained in an earlier post, I loved some of Mathilde Laurent’s work for Guerlain and Cartier but had somehow never focused on the 13 Heures. I’m going to need a reset now before I tackle more of her creations. I feel like I’ve just spent a week in a suite on the Normandie, enjoying the superlative room service at all hours of the day and night. As the Brits say when faced with luxury, “I could get used to this.”
At this point, it would probably be good for my sense of perspective to review half a dozen less beautiful fragrances before coming back to Cartier. One extraordinary aspect of Mathilde Laurent’s work is how unusually natural it all feels, even when she is composing a 100% synthetic perfume. I always thought that the complexity of naturals was what made them natural, and that a synthetic could not be complex. L’Heure Perdue is a counterexample that has the force of a mathematical demonstration. We now know it can be done.
The other thing is that she seems to be alone in carrying the torch of a particular refinement, by which I mean the opposite of coarseness, which in retrospect may be uniquely French. Perfumes, even great ones, have always flirted with coarseness. The Carons, Habanita, Shalimar, Bandit, Fracas and others were creatures of fashion, and fashion cannot be meek and delicate. Conversely, delicate fragrances, especially civilized florals, have never been fashion statements and have tended towards the dowdy.
Laurent’s work is outside this either/or scheme and reminds me of the curious mixture of gossamer elegance and emotional power that Debussy and Ravel put in their music, that Colette and Proust put in their writing. That, I believe, was what France was about in its heyday. Mathilde Laurent has revived it in fragrance. All the Heures have it. I fished out the Heures at random from the Cartier parcel, and as it happens XI and XIII came last. They are, in my opinion, the best of the series, and I find it very comforting that the perfume grapevine has always said this. Everyone knows when a fragrance is truly great, and that’s why perfumery is an art.
For paid subscribers, reviews of L’Heure Perdue, L’Heure Osée and La Treizième Heure.
Samples kindly provided by Cartier