Must

Must is Cartier’s first fragrance, launched in 1981. According to Michael Edwards, cited by the blog Yesterday’s Perfume, the house had sent perfumers a brief for two fragrances: a fresh one for daytime and a more seductive one for evening, probably an oriental.

Jean-Jacques Diener, a young Givaudan perfumer, caught the house’s attention by choosing to combine the two into a single composition. The Parfum and the Eau de Toilette still coexist today in the house’s range.

Perfumery’s enfant terrible

Cartier presents it as perfumery’s enfant terrible, born with an appetite for freedom, a desire for insolence and a refusal of conventions. According to the house, galbanum brings a touch of anarchy to the elegance of a grand oriental, a register its green note had never entered.

Cartier sees in the Eau de Toilette an incomparable freshness within an oriental, uniting the green of galbanum, an opulent jasmine and a soft vanilla. At Marionnaud, the house describes it as fresher and greener than the Parfum.