Cartier

Cartier was founded in Paris in 1847 by watchmaker and jeweler Louis-François Cartier, who took over the workshop of his mentor Adolphe Picard. Over the following decades, his son Alfred Cartier and grandsons Louis, Pierre and Jacques expanded the house into an international luxury name, initially through jewelry and timepieces. Cartier later became part of the Richemont group in 1988, anchoring it within a large luxury conglomerate while maintaining its historical identity in watches, jewelry, leather goods and fragrance.

Cartier’s move into perfumery came relatively late. Although the name “Cartier Parfums” was registered in 1938, the first official fragrance, Must de Cartier, did not appear until 1981. Created by Jean-Jacques Diener, Must de Cartier was a green ambery composition whose bottle was modeled on the brand’s bestselling gold cigarette lighter and designed to be refillable, echoing Cartier’s object-design heritage. The same year saw the launch of Santos de Cartier, a fragrance homage to aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, who had earlier inspired Cartier’s 1904 Santos wristwatch.

Since 2005, in-house perfumer Mathilde Laurent has shaped Cartier’s modern fragrance identity. She has created projects such as Les Heures de Parfum and expanded the line of “shareable” scents like Eau de Cartier, which debuted in 2001 as a unisex, cologne-style fragrance built around violet and cedarwood. Under Laurent, the brand has focused on structured, often transparent compositions that reference Cartier’s jewelry aesthetics while exploring themes like woods, florals and abstract musks across both mainstream and higher-end collections.