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XII: L'Heure Mysterieuse 2009

7.7 / 10 93 Ratings
A popular perfume by Cartier for women and men, released in 2009. The scent is spicy-resinous. It is still in production.
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Main accords

Spicy
Resinous
Woody
Smoky
Oriental

Fragrance Notes

Elemi resinElemi resin FrankincenseFrankincense CorianderCoriander NutmegNutmeg PatchouliPatchouli JasmineJasmine

Perfumer

Ratings
Scent
7.793 Ratings
Longevity
7.768 Ratings
Sillage
6.963 Ratings
Bottle
7.973 Ratings
Value for money
5.614 Ratings
Submitted by Kankuro · last update on 11/19/2025.
Source-backed & verified
Interesting Facts
The fragrance is part of the Les Heures de Parfum collection.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to
L'Air de Rien by Miller Harris
L'Air de Rien
Memoir Man by Amouage
Memoir Man

Reviews

4 in-depth fragrance descriptions
Minigolf

2562 Reviews
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Minigolf
Minigolf
Helpful Review 7  
Night Ride into the Dark Dreamland
A foggy night. Ominous gray-blue. The moon, although full, is just a shadowy, blurred spot of light. The carriage arrives. Later than expected, the dark-clad passengers are already slightly impatient. Now they get in, settling onto creaky benches covered with a wool blanket. Two in front, two in the back, their pale faces turned towards each other.
Only soft murmurs and whispers.
They hear the driver cracking the whip through the air, the signal that the ride is starting. The two horses hitched up are doing their job well, trotting briskly but cautiously through the night. Over damp, unpaved paths, over cobblestones and out into the fields. Soft whinnies occasionally accompany the journey. Past stubble fields, now bare deciduous trees that seem to take on often strange shapes. An earthy-leafy scent wafts into their noses. From somewhere, incense drifts in, as dark as this late evening, into the carriage interior. The fellow passengers seem to be blissfully absorbing the olfactory dark cloud. They are soon at their destination, a lonely inn, far outside the city. It looks mysterious, as the architectural style is unusual. Dark brick, the sturdy walls in octagonal shape, with a kind of turret at each corner, where flickering candles burn in the windows. The size of the building is impressive, as each "bay turret" serves as a guest room and downstairs is the tavern.
The guests disembark from the carriage in "joyful anticipation" and enter the dimly lit dining room, where candles live their burning existence in colored glasses, in dark red, violet, and dark blue. The atmosphere is mystical.
And it smells of all sorts of spices mixed with resins and earthy patchouli oil to deepen the mood. Everyone sits at a specially prepared round table, on which stands a dark purple glass lantern. The innkeeper serves a drink, probably an herbal brew, and sits down with the driver among the guests. Everyone is to hold hands and think of mysterious things they want to dream about. A séance? Almost! Only this is not about ghosts and spirits, but about dark-mystical, pleasantly creepy dreams!
And the "success" does not take long to manifest. One gets inner images of a walk through a moorland, another of dark, deep forests where one could get lost. A third sees in his mind's eye the interior of a house, whose doors always lead into another room with doors. Opened, no matter which, another room with doors...
Like an endless loop... A fourth dreams of stairs that seem never-ending, of attics with "unsafe" wooden floors. And many more peculiarities.
And always, each of the dreams is accompanied by ONE specific scent that makes everything even more MYSTERIOUS: THIS ONE HERE! A melange of all those strangely dark, magical impressions. Everyone enjoys it......
3 Comments
Ergoproxy

1130 Reviews
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Ergoproxy
Ergoproxy
Top Review 12  
Dark Time Span
The mysterious hour is, as we know, midnight. Witching hour, as it was fondly called in superstitious times. Thank goodness we are a bit further along today and no longer lie trembling and shivering in bed, startled by the slightest noise, going ghost hunting.

However, Mathilde Laurent seems to have drawn some inspiration from the witching hour when creating this masterpiece, as L´Heure Mysterieuse has become quite a dark time span.

Even when reading the fragrance notes, it was clear to me that this is a perfume for me. Frankincense, elemi resin, and patchouli promise something heavy, and my hopes were fully satisfied here.

The opening accord is subtly fresh and restrainedly green, but already allows the lush spiciness of the heart and base to shine through.

After a little while, a wonderful accord of jasmine and spices comes into play. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this scent melancholic, but it’s not really uplifting either. I simply can’t find a suitable word that could accurately describe my impression of the fragrance.

The base then adds a resinous-smoky accord to the heart note and skillfully rounds off the scent.

L´Heure Mysterieuse would be a wonderful companion for a concert evening or an opera gala for me. However, nothing cheerful should be played.

Whether I will be able to afford this Cartier, I do not yet know, as my self-imposed pain threshold is clearly exceeded here, but who knows!
7 Comments
Chanelle

750 Reviews
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Chanelle
Chanelle
Top Review 14  
Sacred, dark, mysterious
A few months ago, I briefly tested L'heure Mysterieuse at Galeries Lafayette in Paris and could only vaguely remember dark chocolate, and that the price had deterred me from any intention to buy. Now, I came into possession of a beautiful luxury sample in Cartier red with gold embossing and was able to put it to a thorough test.
The top note was still relatively fresh, but already quite spicy and incense-like.
The heart note did justice to its name: earthy-woody notes blended wonderfully with a slightly chocolatey, smoky note and dry spice. Opulence, baroque churches, heavy fabrics interwoven with gold, and tapestries come to mind, as well as past wealth, peeling splendor, and crumbling varnish.
A sublime feeling spreads.
Cartier, a brand I haven't particularly liked until now, as the former users of Panthere and Must left what seemed to be a lasting image damage in my mind in the 90s, suddenly appears in a completely different light. And that light is golden! The L'heures Exclusifs line elevates Cartier to the ranks of the great perfume houses, seamlessly placing it among Maison Guerlain, Armani Privé, and Dior Collection Couturier fragrances.
The base is a high-quality blend of patchouli and woods, and the longevity is correspondingly good.
The fragrance is only available in a few houses, but it is definitely a candidate for the colder season, festive occasions, and as a pampering scent for lovers of precious, spicy, cozy patchouli fragrances.
1 Comment
Profumo

289 Reviews
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Profumo
Profumo
Top Review 19  
Humorless and melancholic, yet beautiful
The twelfth hour - a mysterious one?
Well, it cannot mean twelve o'clock noon - no 'High Noon', no sun at its zenith far and wide, quite the opposite: 'L´Heure Mysterieuse' is a dark fragrance, thoroughly. Aside from a few green and floral aspects that flash through the scent like lightning, it instantly spreads an aura of deep blackness. However, it is not a cool, dry blackness, but rather a damp, velvety one.

It's a bit like someone in dark robes has settled onto a pew for the midnight mass in a church clouded with incense and the scent veils of some floral bouquets, which has just been treated with fresh linseed oil varnish.
He will take these aromas clinging to his clothes into the darkness, and it is precisely these that characterize the fragrance: aromatic-spicy smoke, sweet-sticky resins, and timid floral nuances. They give the scent something almost rubbery, leaning a bit towards Bulgari's 'Black', just not quite as sweet. Yet there is some sweetness present right from the start: the sweetness of elemi resin, reminiscent of the smell of freshly stripped pine needles, only a bit more balsamic, warmer, less coniferous.
The scent of this resin forms a wonderful alliance with strong incense, whose harmony reveals an almost menthol-like facet. Amidst this dominant accord: a recurring hint of strangely non-indolic jasmine. The floral scent is indeed there, but somehow stripped of its often unbearable undertone that frequently associates with something sweetly decaying.
Perhaps this 'odour' is merely hidden behind a faint, aromatic-spicy accord of some nutmeg and a pinch of coriander - both almost inseparable. Only if one knows that they are supposed to be part of the composition could one think to faintly sense them.

Both facets of the fragrance, the floral and the spicy, are so well integrated into the smoky-resinous base tone that they at most play a subordinate role, namely to enrich and expand the scent in the background - at no point in the fragrance's development do they push themselves into the foreground.

The entire fragrance itself does not push itself into the foreground - there is nothing loud, fresh, or uplifting, only an unobtrusive, heavy melancholy, a shadowed state of mind. Thus, the scent also remains quite close to the wearer, and even when freshly sprayed, it does not develop room-filling powers. However, it remains recognizable for a long time and with a certain intensity in a closer radius.
Many hours after this resinous-smoky scent has spread its mysteriously sad aura, warm, more conciliatory tones increase, and a fine underlying sweetness, in harmony with soft patchouli notes, transforms it into a creamy skin scent that is always a pleasure to sniff, so delicate is it.

All in all, Mathilde Laurent has once again composed an exquisite, quite melancholic fragrance with 'L´Heure Mysterieuse', featuring a finely ambered base (her good old Guerlain school shines through once again), but one must be a serious type, prone to humorlessness and sadness, to find this scent suitable for oneself.

The fragrance does not correspond to my temperament and self-perception at any phase, and so I prefer to go with another creation, also dominated by incense and elemi resins, but vibrating with an underlying, frivolous-erotic vibe: Damien Bash's 'Parfum Lucifer 3'.

This is not only mysterious but also incredibly sanguine - devilishly so.
0 Comments

Statements

18 short views on the fragrance
3
Incense, resins and patchouli very skillfully interwoven. Jasmin brightens the composition. Everything slightly spicy and light.
0 Comments
2 years ago
1
This would make an amazing room fragrance (I mean this in a good way).
0 Comments
39
34
Warm spots
In sweet soils
Where soft wood fibers
With spicy resins
Dark chocolates
And earth liqueurs
Become one
After midnight
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34 Comments
33
36
From church windows
incense spirals
over vanilla wood
and resin wounds
patchouli envelops
jasmine blossoms
warm, spicy
still...
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36 Comments
13
4
Jasmine between dusk & dawn
Patch & resin [bitter chocolate] Blue Hour
Streetlamp_Graffiti Wall [incense fog]
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4 Comments
8 years ago
11
1
Wonderful patchouli, gently wrapped in fine, very light incense. Moderate, amber sweetness and so beautifully mysterious. More!!
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1 Comment
10
2
The scent reminds me of the smell of faux leather, which I don't find unpleasant, but on the other hand, I can't say it's really good.
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2 Comments
9
9
A very woody, spicy, light incense. Hardly any smoke, subtly sweet-resinous with a delicate floral nuance. Unusual and intricate.
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9 Comments
7
2
E.A. Poe's writing desk! Elemiharz creates the pencil note like in "Carbone," then it turns smoky-resinous, the resin becomes overripe, juicy amber.
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2 Comments
7
1
A freshly picked little holy book in a country cabin, on a forest clearing
and it's already getting dark...
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1 Comment
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