Still from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" 1953

“Tiffany’s!

Cartier!

Talk to me Harry Winston, tell me all about it!” -Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend lyrics

Robert H Carat By Cartier©

Taking inspiration from faceted diamonds, venerable jewelry house Cartier has recently released its first pillar perfume in four years aptly called Cartier Carat. Authored by in-house perfumer Mathilde Laurent, Carat is a sprightly, light, and lively mixed floral imbued with plenty of sunlight and seven distinct floral notes. Each of the floral notes represents one of the colors that sparkle and shimmer from a perfectly cut and polished diamond.

Diamond Refraction wikiscience.com

 When the light enters the prism of the diamond, it makes the light explode in seven colors of the rainbow, In fact, diamonds create a rainbow just for you. I thought to myself, If I take seven colors of flowers, then I can create a light, a white light, made of seven colors.” – Mathilde Laurent. Diamonds get their brilliance from three things: reflection, refraction and dispersion. Reflection is the light that hits the diamond and is immediately bounced back up, giving it an instantaneous shine. As light moves through a diamond, it is scattered and fractured, (known as refraction) creating the sparkle that diamonds are known for. Diamonds are like tiny, complicated prisms; the light enters through the top, and then is angled around the inside of the diamond before being aimed back towards the top and out through the surface. This creates the rainbow effect and adds to the shine. “

Marilyn Monroe by Richard Avedon

So what does a diamonds’ sparkle smell like? In Mathilde Laurent’s imagination the color/olfactive spectrum goes like this: (Red) tulip, (orange) honeysuckle, (yellow) daffodil, (green) ylang-ylang, (blue) hyacinth, (indigo) iris, and (violet) violet, and coming from Cartier, the creators of such grand fragrances as Baiser Du Dragon (my personal favorite), Must De Cartier,  Pasha, and Panthere, you just know it’s going to be good!

Promo for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

In olfactive terms, Cartier Carat is an armful of white and yellow trembling buds, still damp from the florist’s cooler. This is a floral perfume lovers Nirvana, the quintessential accumulation of bright light and spring all done up in an emerald cut diamond shaped bottle. Citrus notes add an extra layer of luminosity, and a dash of aldehydes create the ever-present diamond-like sparkle. The perfume opens with flowers and closes with flowers, rarely straying off a linear path of blossomy goodness. And for a floral perfume lover like me, that makes it damn near perfect. Notes: violet, iris, hyacinth, ylang-ylang, narcissus, honeysuckle, tulips, citrus, aldehydes.

Disclosure: The perfume and opinions are my own.

-Robert Herrmann, Senior Editor

-Art Direction: Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief