Mathilde Laurent: translating Cartier stones into scent

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In 1928, Cartier’s master artisans completed the Patiala necklace, a spectacular one-off design commissioned by the Maharaja of Patiala, an avid collector of stones known for his sybaritic lifestyle. Cartier created a multi-stranded bib necklace with 2,930 of his diamonds – setting a yellow 234k De Beers diamond at its centre. In 1948, the Cartier masterpiece disappeared under mysterious circumstances – a case made even more peculiar when an employee of the brand discovered parts of the necklace at a London second-hand jewellery shop in 1998.

When Matilde Laurent first spotted a printed diagram mapping the necklace’s many components for its restoration, the award-winning perfumer was reminded of a fragrance formula. “Looking at the list of all the stones and their numbers – I saw a perfume,” she remembers. Laurent, 48, joined Cartier in 2005 as the marque’s in-house perfumer tasked with creating scents in line with Cartier’s noble heritage. “Our job is to translate,” she says. “We translate a house into a bottle, a smell.”

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