Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, March 29, and it is Good Friday in the Western Christian world (the dates when the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Good Friday and Easter are different). For the first time, I was able to go downtown to my church and help with all the labor that goes into the magnificent floral arrangements we enjoy at Easter. Even though Good Friday is a somber day, it was lovely to work with my hands with a very congenial group of fellow parishioners and handle the gorgeous flowers. The large room where we were working was filled with their fragrance, especially the lilies but also roses and stock.

There were many other flowers but those were the most fragrant. As I smelled it, I kept thinking it reminded me of an actual perfume, and then I realized what it was: Cartier’s Carat.

Created by Mathilde Laurent in 2018, I feel as if Carat has never gotten much vocal love among perfumistas. I like it very much, especially in the spring. It was meant to constitute a fragrant evocation of diamonds, with their prismatic reflection of the whole color spectrum, each component color represented by a different flower.

To accomplish this, the perfume maker decided to imitate an optical phoneme that is characteristic of diamonds: diffraction of color. So she chose seven different fresh flowers that, when combined, formed a new, abstract flower.

The composition represents the colors of rainbow in the form of flowers; violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red are captured with the notes of violet, lily, hyacinth, ylang-ylang, narcissus, honeysuckle and tulips.

Per Fragrantica, top notes are Green Notes, Pear and Bergamot; middle notes are Hyacinth, Tulip, Narcissus, Lily, Honeysuckle, Violet and Ylang-Ylang; base notes are Mimosa and White Musk. I agree with one reviewer who also smelled lilac; I have a small lilac blooming on my patio right now, and it definitely makes an appearance in Carat. It reminds me of the lilac in Jean Patou’s Vacances, the Collection Heritage version created by Thomas Fontaine in 2014.

Now that my nose has associated Carat with arranging Easter flowers, I think I’ll have to wear it on Easter Sunday, together with a hat. If you celebrate Easter or another spring holiday, do you have any favorite fragrances you associate with the holiday? And do you have any special Easter or other spring holiday traditions?