Baiser Volé
Cartier Baiser Volé Eau de Parfum 100ml is a lily fragrance, which is rarer than it sounds, because lily is a difficult flower to build a scent around and most houses avoid it.
Mathilde Laurent composed it in 2011 and she treats the flower as a whole plant rather than a bloom. Galbanum opens it, and that choice is the key to the whole thing: it is a green, bitter, sappy material that smells like a cut stem, and it gives the fragrance a cool, slightly austere beginning. Lily follows, powdery and creamy and faintly spiced, with a pollen like quality that makes it feel alive rather than pretty, and rose sits beside it to add roundness. Vanilla closes the composition, used sparingly, warming the flower without sweetening it into dessert. Galbanum is also what makes the first ten minutes memorable.
Four materials, and it behaves like the short composition it is: elegant, legible and without surprises. The pleasure is in the quality of each material rather than in watching them change places. Lily is a flower that smells expensive when it is done well and like a funeral when it is not, and this is firmly in the first camp. At eau de parfum strength it lasts well, six hours or more, and it stays within a civilised distance after the first hour, which makes it usable at work and at formal daytime occasions as well as in the evening. It reads as feminine and quite refined, and it suits spring and autumn best. One spray is enough on a warm day and two will carry an evening.
Cartier is a French jewellery and watch house founded in Paris in 1847, which opened its first sales salon in 1853 and now sits within the Swiss group Richemont. Unusually for a house of its kind it makes its perfumes itself, and it appointed Mathilde Laurent as its first dedicated in house perfumer in 2005.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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