Serge Lutens (google translate makes this exquisite)
Serge Lutens “The scent alone decides”
A few months ago, at the turn of a random coincidence and unexpected, Serge Lutens was kind enough to please answer a few questions. With candor, simplicity and a tone tinged with humor and poetry, he played along with well-chosen questions auparfum, which has not always been kind to some of his creations. It is to his credit! I thank him then, and leave you the pleasure of discovering the answers on subjects as diverse as perfume critic, his career, Silk Stockings and IFRA restrictions …
- You and your brand to attract many auparfum and other blogs. Are you aware of this effect with people? How do you explain that? Do you grow a certain mystery voluntarily?
I do not cultivate the mystery but if for some, for him, I exist, what can I do? Perhaps it is the perfume that works? If I remove the strings to the passions, what better purpose!
No doubt, those who love my perfumes and refocus them feel it. It is an answer to themselves, but now I walk, I can not give an explanation for others.
- Some of your perfume ( Nuit de Cellophane , Silk Stockings …) have not only received rave reviews, especially on this site. Have you read? How do you critique?
Understanding or as the dictionary definition: “enter the body, grasped by the mind or in the direction most common, consider something with fear, worry in advance. “
I take some knowledge of critical or rather, it makes me know. I support freedom of opinion and sites, so far, respond well to this point of view. If there is criticism, I try to perceive nature. Sometimes I consider it free, or too far from what I wanted to make. In essence, it reflects a little, not on the scent, but my attitude vis-à-vis him. Have I said enough, was it pretty obvious?
- Can you retrace your route, your brand and how was it built?
At the age of fourteen I was placed with no choice - I wanted to be an actor - in a hair salon. “A lot”, as they say. I lived there two years without a soul, but taken lightly. “Dryer and curlers.” Pins placed in the cantankerous owner, whose attitude was compounded by my reserve …
By sixteen, I cut the cord first.
Too many people. One girl told me as sad as me, and beautiful in that. The first strand fell and cut with my past. The trust was born. Her beauty was my vengeance, probably she guessed.
This augured a set of predispositions where the face would start because of the hair to makeup, there was only a eyelash naturally crossed. A visit to the white powdered girls, straight hair. It was in hand. Before doing so, I do not know. Passage to makeup, I become “famous”, first with Vogue, then natural consequence, by Dior that I lifted the colors that women carried in triumph as a liberation. It was no more makeup, but an option statement.
In 1980, I joined the group Shiseido under the label of “Art Director” as a little horse on anything. I was just the person who was a Japanese group, a brand by offering an image.
Les Salons du Palais Royal is already an old story. My past does nothing to fix. The bottle and the decor are linked to place, and the perfume - a personal will, surprising at the time - was a new face, using the scent of marginalized compositions worthy of poems cruel, opening a new “song “After the photography and film.
I regret to me that this place and this attempt could generate a snob, which would lie in history, threatening to lock him in the niche. Push open doors is not the way to find the absolute.
The bottles - table - this exclusive perfume instead are attached and can be detached, perfumes, they can move at will in the two presentations of bottles (table or pocket). Some like Ambre Sultan, orange blossom, Chergui have already done. All of these lines is signed “Serge Lutens”.
Quality and the choice of species, the components are identical. The final choice of direction is often given after conception. The term is also personal in both cases. Serge Black or Light Musk do not have to envy the most legendary fragrance of Exhibitions and if you want to compare, for example: Her Majesty the Rose pink night the complexity of the composition of the city first, defines the rose more than Rose at night is more shimmer.
- You are universally recognized as the pioneer of a certain perfume called “niche”. However you look at what others are doing? What brands / flavors you like?
This is without vanity that I promise you. The scent was placed in front of me. I dare say, he held out his arms. I guessed that I had something to do, to say. Before that, the flavors did not interest me. I’m curious about everything. As literature, painting, architecture, film, photography are visual expressions that I complete. Once completed, the scent leaves me as he came.
Much its gestation is a tension. He must confess. So the sense that I bring to this perfume.
If I find a perfume, it’s always someone crossing the door, with whom he made unit. Rarely do I detect the origin … as rare as, well, that once, when I return!
- Feeling Silk Stockings, I thought it was both very “in tune with the times”, following a series of fragrances launched in this same line olfactory ( Fleur de Liane , A Morning Storm , A scent …), and together with a background very seventies, very vintage. How would you describe it? Assume that you have made a “perfume in fashion”, even if you are known to make fun of trends?
I do not know the flavors you mention and the previous question about it, I can guarantee that the trends are not my concern, except mine are not always directed (tendency to …). Silk stockings is built on a paradox and a color, blue, purple. It mainly involves the flower hyacinth and iris rhizome.
The pivot is my doubt and unable to decide the winner or to one of these temptations, to let one or the other in a delicate balance, powdered, mentioned but never delivered. Ensure a tightrope walker.
- The atmosphere is very floral, fresh almost dare I say, began with Night of Cellophane , especially Water , is quite unusual and new for the brand, is a volunteer shift, or just coincidence?
Night of cellophane, like all my perfumes, reminds me a moment. There was Kyoto, a day of fatigue and jet lag, in the thick heat of July and timely meeting of jasmine “Mandarin”, which at that moment was a touch heavy on my mind. L Water, she languished in me since the release of Ambre Sultan (1993). I had then drafted without being satisfied. I longed for her, a long-lasting freshness, as you know, I am an “anti-colognialiste.” Freshness of clean linen that is not the return of an odor collected - which depends exclusively on chemical order - but the poetic impression that she had imprinted on me, in his evocation.
Emotion is expressed, a perfume is not a lemon. It takes discernment and implementation. In essence, a new bias that stimulates me.
- Do you watch the sales of your fragrances? Do you ever happen to you that this or that perfume was disappointing for the public? Do you accept the fact that sometimes go wrong? you question?
I question, I do it every day on everything. I know the reactions and can encrypt, but that does not change my opinion on the fragrance. Until proven otherwise, my only client is the scent.
- I will not ask you what you think of reformulations, amputations imposed by IFRA today, you have already widely expressed on the subject. Could you imagine that some brands decide to market perfumes stamped “IFRA non-compliant”? Serge Lutens is what would have the right or freedom to do this?
I have already considered and well before the law because little by little, it’s the flour that we remove the baker, but the files are so complex to complete, sometimes two or three years without being sure of the result … This law is not always justified, especially when it comes to crops. This is not an intent to harm, by censoring the part of IFRA but rather, a misunderstanding, a lack of depth of the subject. That said, I do not despair find a solution to what I call a brood.
Maybe one day we will t appear on the case “the fragrance kills”, “perfume seriously damages health”. All this in the smoke of factories, cars! Two of my perfumes made yet could not put their heads above the law. Maybe one day, by this prohibition, I become a pirate? Why not!
- What is your relationship with the Shiseido group that owns your brand? You impose any constraints? Objectives to be achieved? What flexibility do you have?
My name is redundant. I remain the owner. If there was coercion, it would break the egg. The objectives relate to the management of the brand.
- When you are in the process of creating a new perfume, do you feel the steps to others that Christopher Sheldrake and yourself? Who else is involved in the creation of a new perfume?
Immerse myself like a submarine, isolate myself in the idea. Nobody, apart from Christopher Sheldrake, intervenes before the finalization of the perfume. The scent alone decides.
- Do you work differently for the creations of the Salons du Palais Royal and Serge Lutens perfumes? Besides certainly the price of raw materials, how would you define the difference between the two
I think that answers your questions about this brand Serge Lutens. Often, and although working one scent at a time, I combined the missions and there, before its completion, can not decide his destination: the orphanage luxury Royal Palace - now Serge Lutens - or selective distribution .
- What do you do when you are not working on your new perfume?
The same as when I work. I am focused on a specific subject, I will not give its prior consent. I write, I read …
- You said you’re not interested in the past, but what do you think are the most iconic fragrances of your brand? Among other brands, what are you the greatest fragrances of the past 100 years?
The iconic brand perfumes - I evokes neither the number nor fame, but what they represented to me the time to implement them - are: Femininity of Wood and his sister differently accomplished Cedar, Amber Sultan, Chergui, Black Moorish and more intimate, Serge Noire …?
Actually, I do not notice the perfume itself. For cons, I can attach myself to a scent emitted by the appearance or determination of a person who removes it, and if my curiosity compels me, and if the opportunity is given me, I would ask the question.
I can be surprised at the variety of my tastes, inside the mine. They branch out, I would say poetically.
Interviewed in September 2010
