Les Heures de Cartier: L'Heure Perdue XI

I find it hilarious that very few people actually tell you what this smells like. Even perfume website and forum admins seem to have given up. Most people stick to abstraction, which is fair because this perfume is all about abstraction. You only need to look so far as the name: the lost hour. How do you capture lost time in a fragrance? To me, this is less about reflecting upon lost opportunity and more like the feeling you get from amnesia. Mathilde Laurent sticks purely to synthetics for this perfume to hammer home the feeling that something unnatural has happened, something just doesn’t feel right; you’re not alarmed, but something happened and you don’t what, or what time-slot it fell into. Thanks to big doses of vanillin, ionones, and cinnamon phenyls, you can, if you shut the subjective part of your brain off for a minute, pull some facets of some very familiar characters - but again, just not how you remember them. Maybe this is dementia or Alzheimers, then? Do me a favor, go to your kitchen pantry and pull out some vanilla extract, or vanilla bean paste would be better if you have it. Take a big whiff. Now imagine that vanilla from your pantry stripped of all sugar and the sweet top-soil like earthiness. In the absence of sugar and earthiness, what your mind should be telling you that’s left is the vanilla bean’s actual body - the bitter plant fibers that make the bean and the pigments that give it its color. It will smell like the plant it actually is. What you then have is the vanilla you get in Perdue. Finally, do the same thing for the cinnamon in your pantry. Smell that layer that just hangs on the surface of the cinnamon? It’s a bit peppery, without making you want to sneeze; it’s woody, but not in the way most woods are because in cinnamon it’s extremely dry? Basically you should be smelling the high and airy woody notes of cinnamon and not the deep and earthy notes of cinnamon. Those characteristics you pick up are the phenyls of cinnamon alcohols, cinnamon aldehydes, and woody ionones used in Perdue. Again, imagine you have dementia/Alzheimers to the point where you smell vanilla and cinnamon, you mostly recognize them, but one half of your brain says you don’t recognize them while the other half does. This is Mathilde Laurent’s brilliant trick with Perdue. Et voila, the inspiration for Perdue: something was lost, it’s recognizable, but the uncertainty is unshakable. You’re welcome. But I can’t leave it there. Being so reductive with a perfume like Perdue is unfair because the tricks of the synthetics are just part of the story. Ms. Laurent’s deft and brilliant blending hand is the other part. How she brings these unnatural and mind-warping characters together is superb. I would love to ask her more about these materials and how she handled them, mainly to understand the perfume’s opening. For context, this perfume is straightforward and monodimensional in the traditional sense; there aren’t clear top, heart, and base notes, and dry downs as such. But something certainly happens in the opening. There is an aldehyde blast that immediately grabs the wearer's attention. They are not the sparkling and shimmering aldehydes of Chanel and others we all know and love. These aldehydes are large and very round, satin beige in color compared to Chanel-aldehyde’s prismatic white, and impenetrable. You’ve seen this effect before on your television, where a film has a frozen frame of an explosion that they rewind to show the explosion folding in on itself. The act of doing this somehow neuters the explosion of all alarm and threat. The large, round, soft, beige aldehydes in the opening of Perdue do just that: explode, stop mid explosion, and fold-in on themselves to the eerie quiet of the perfume. Perdue will definitely not be for everyone. It doesn’t obey the rules of commercial perfumery. It’s olfactory avant garde art and I can’t thank Mathilde Laurent and Cartier enough for having the cajones to give it to us and to keep making it. It’s brilliant.

Phenolic oriental ★★★★★ Now nearing 8 years of being a perfume maniac and having tried and tested hundreds of perfumes, oils and aromachemicals, I’ve located a faraway kingdom of mind-numbing strangeness to which only a handful of perfumes have managed to enter. The song of this mysterious land sings of two opposing extremes – heartfelt familiarity and the cold eeriness at the bottom of uncanny valley. A soothing lullaby of childhood references, humane warmth and all things reassuring but discolored with unfamiliar and disturbing hues. Your will is dulled into comfort, but something is off. Many niche fragrances aim to be queer but usually end up aloof and unapproachable for the lack of anything human to grasp on. Being weird is easy and having approachable qualities effortless to achieve, yet it’s the combination of far extremes from both that’s hard to properly execute – a chilling atmosphere that simultaneously lulls and alarms. Some notable residents of this place so far are 100% Love with its chocolate-rose vomit, Le Feu d’Issey as the crazy B-vitamin milk oriental and even Angel as the dirtied funfair. Here comes the newest inhabitant, l’Heure Perdue, which I’d predominantly describe as paint thinner cardboard vanilla. HP is a kaleidoscopic marvel that seems to change with every wear and reveal unforeseen peculiarities depending on the wearer’s mood. Notes and accords of hot milk, rubber, bread, cinnamon cookies, iris, aromatic herbs, amber and peanut butter coming and going by the minute by the hour by the day. The soul of HP that seems to be on display every time is the intensely strange and profoundly phenolic paint thinner accord married to a rare treat that is nutty carboard vanilla. This mixture on one hand recalls easy memories like old books, freshly baked bread, milk tea and childhood homes yet the phenolic off-accord simulates a different type of enjoyment first experienced as a child. That gasoline, paint thinner or even nail polish remover smells so bizarre, intense, chemical and dangerous for health, but you wanted to stick in your nose again and again. Even more strange, an almost Guerlain-like appetizing and classic French touch hums in the background and ties the composition to a harmonious and legitimate perfume. How Mathilde Laurent arranged all these parts and made it both evocative and wearable is genius and beyond me. She has also openly stated that l’Heure Perdue is 100% synthetic which I think further magnifies her artistic vision and skill. This damned liquid, fusing delight and disturb into one, is not borrowed from nature but a product of one’s pure imagination. A word of caution, I consider HP to be a challenging perfume and shouldn’t be compared with regular perfumery and dismissed too quickly. A bit too strange to wear daily although once you’ve familiarized yourself with the scent, there is absolutely nothing on the market that satisfies the crave for what l’Heure Perdue hooks you on. For once you’ve ventured through secret passages and stepped into the kingdom of delight and disturb, heard its anthem and smelled the air, you are forever bound to seek these parts of a torn map to rebuild and find its entrance anew, again and once more. Soundtrack: Boards of Canada – Diving Station

I have long been a fan of Mathilde Laurent's work, ever since falling in love with Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Pamplelune. Her recent creations for Cartier have been consistently good, with « Les Heures » in particular piquing my interest. Apparently taking inspiration from Proust's madeleine, « Les Heures » aim to capture memories lost in time. Thanks to Luca Turin's glowing review, I was especially keen to try L'Heure Perdue XI, and found a full bottle on eBay. I sprayed it liberally on my wrists, expecting it to be love at first sniff. Instead, I was met with a jarring, deeply unusual scent, unlike any I had smelled before, and I was disappointed by my first impression - dislike, and an inability to understand what I was smelling. All day, it followed me, subtle yet hovering, and I was compelled to repeatedly smell it and attempt to decode it. As I familiarised myself with XI, it not only grew on me, but I began to appreciate it as the technical marvel it is. XI is apparently completely synthetic, and this in conjunction with the lack of listed notes adds an air of mystery. It is quite static and wears close to the skin. It smells of dry and dusty paper initially, slightly musty with a hint of sweetness. I have read before that the odour of old books is due to a compound related to vanillin that is emitted when paper begins to break down, and this is exactly what XI captures - better than any book-inspired scent I've tried. There is also something slightly lactonic, akin to sweetened/condensed milk under the surface. Instead of being off-putting to this milk-phobic, it is subtle and comforting, remininscent of a childhood memory that is just out of reach - in keeping with its Proustian moment inspiration. As it dries down, some very subtle powdery floral notes can be detected - some iris and L'Eau d'Hiver-esque heliotrope. XI has intimate sillage but lasts throughout the day. Unisex in my opinion, it works well as a discreet, comforting day scent that transcends seasons. Warm and comforting in a manner akin to both a cashmere jumper and warm brioche, I have worn this every day since my initial try, finding it quite addictive. I wish it was more readily available (and affordable!) A challenging scent that requires contemplation, XI is a rare masterpiece. An olfactory experience that unfolds slowly, XI is so much more rewarding than many scents with instant appeal. The best I've tried in a while, Mme Laurent has outdone herself. Incredible. 5/5.

L'Heure Perdue may likely be one of the most challenging fragrances in my possession, yet I am transfixed by it. I think of vanilla scented rubber erasers; flashbacks to the party balloons of childhood; the smell of my backpack I used in the second grade; pencils and crayons; Vienna wafers for snacks; warm milk on a sick day home from school;musty, dusty old books in a library (a lignin accord?!). It is a geyser of Proustian flashbacks. I am pulled inside out wearing this, thinking of how fleeting childhood is, but how life felt like it took forever each day, and a thousand adventures could occur from breakfast to bedtime. Now, at age 45, I sit here, wearing this, and I'm wondering what was Mathilde Laurent's true intention for this fragrance, because surely this isn't terribly accessible, it's not beautiful in the conventional sense, and the masses would surely scoff at how bizarre it seems to be. Yet I am smitten by its weirdness, unrelentingly phenolic and almost ammoniac. While its overtones are defiant against the conventions of perfumery, its undertones do reveal the heritage of Guerlain, with glimmers of Jicky-ness and Shalimar-ness in its heart and drydown. Further flashbacks of salty-soft-marzipan Play Doh and Magic Markers surface in the drydown. This is not for the fragrance novice, the faint of heart, but rather the insatiable adventurer, the nose that so deeply desires uncharted territory, because there is surely nothing else that smells like this. I give it a 10 out of 10.

My first impression of this fragrance was rather underwhelming, but everything changed the third time I tried it this spring in Cannes. Since then, I’ve become completely hooked. What really convinced me was how a simple paper blotter continued to scent my room for three days after I sprayed it. I kept catching these beautiful wafts in the air. The scent itself is surprisingly difficult to describe. To my nose, it combines a delicate rosy facet with a creamy, almost lactonic texture. At the same time, there’s a subtle sharpness running through the composition that keeps everything perfectly balanced perhaps coming from the aldehydes. What I love most is that it smells clean, but not in the typical “fresh laundry” or shower-gel sense. It’s a completely different interpretation of cleanliness: elegant, sophisticated, and distinctive. If you’re looking for a clean scent that stands apart from the crowd, this is absolutely worth trying. The blending is masterful. I’m genuinely happy to finally own a bottle. I paid full retail price for it which is something I rarely do and that alone says a lot about how much I enjoy this fragrance. As for some of the more unusual comparisons I’ve seen in other reviews, I personally don’t get balloons, latex, vomit, or any other off-putting nuances. On my skin, it’s simply beautiful.