CARTIER
Must de Cartier EDT
1981
PERFUMER
Jean-Jacques Diener
galbanum
mandarin
lemon
bergamot
rosewood
peach
pineapple
jasmine
narcissus
rose
Carnation
ylang-ylang
orris
neroli
orchid
leather
civet
tonka bean
amber
vanilla
musk
vetiver
This will be a comparison between (old, perhaps vintage?) batches of the Must de Carter EDT & Parfum. I used rather old samples, as you can see pictured below, and they will likely smell quite different and aged. I also don’t know Must de Cartier well enough to compare to the currently available version or even know what these were supposed to smell like.
What I can tell you, is how surprisingly different these two are on my skin. The EDT being a greener, mossy and at times soapy scent, whereas the Parfum is darker and reveals a syrupy vanilla from the first moment.
I can’t stress how much more of the vanilla comes to the forefront in the Parfum and how well it’s done. It’s not an airy, loud vanilla, but a soft, smooth, thick cloud. It reminds me a bit of the vanilla pipe tobacco scent cloud that my grandfather always smokes (or even a bit of Parfums de Marly Herod for that matter).
What’s mostly true for the Parfum is that it’s quite sweet, but it has that similar sweetness with ylang-ylang, other florals, buttery iris etc. that you find in vintage Guerlains. It’s warm and inviting; cinnamon isn’t listed as a note, but that comes to mind. A lot of warm sandalwood. That sandalwood & iris combination gets progressively more prominent and more powdery until the later drydown. The vanilla is quite dark, almost going into chocolate territory; this doesn’t match the ‘floral-vanillic’ descriptions I’ve read elsewhere, so this sample has likely grown sweeter over time and lost some of its top notes.
The EDT on the other hand, has all of those facets when you really look for it, but much, much toned down. It takes long for the vanilla to be a main player and it never goes near the same level of dark and sweet as the Parfum does on my skin. There’s a clear emphasis on the fresher and fruitier notes. Looking at the note breakdown, you can almost chop it in half and dedicate one part to each the EDT and the Parfum, based on these two samples that I wore. You get non-descript, but clear fruitiness that I don’t smell at all in the Parfum. The same goes for the aldehydic soapiness; it wears very nice, but it’s a prominent element here that I don’t register at all in the Parfum.
I do also enjoy wearing the EDT, with it’s soapiness, but at the same time rich, dense and warmer (but still greenish) base that you can unmistakably only find in these older compositions. Yet, it’s the Parfum that steals the show for me. I have a feeling the aging made the differences between the two larger and based on some of the other reviews I’ve read, I presume the Parfum has grown significantly sweeter as often happens with aged fragrances.
Sidenote: Must de Cartier is often compared to Yves Rocher Venice / Venise; I happen to have a vintage Venice EDT miniature, so I decided to apply that as well for comparison. I believe the notes for Venice and Must de Cartier Parfum upon release (1986 and 1981 respectively) are nearly identical and it seems that Venice basically copied the Must de Cartier DNA. Again, keep in mind that my bottle will have aged for a long time and the scent will likely differ significantly between different bottles. Either way, in my testing, the more Venice dries down, the more it becomes closer to the richer vanilla of the Must de Cartier Parfum and less the fresher EDT. It hovers in between for a while, but I would say the late drydown is actually the most vanillic of the 3, albeit less dark than the Must de Cartier Parfum. Venice opens with some of the same freshness from the EDT, but after several minutes, it’s also mainly a sweet powdery scent that comes through. It just feels better retained and more precise from the miniature that I have. You can check out the Venice review here.
