To read parts I and II, click here and here.
D.B.: What do you tell Christopher Sheldrake to work with? What do you give him?
S.L.: I talk a lot about myself and then,
after all, I’ve been dealing with perfumes for 24 years… even longer than that…
In a way, if you will, I have my materials. I know how things should be done,
what should be done. I say: “Let’s try this, let’s try that”. In fact, what’s
terrible is that people always want to give you a role.
I’m not a technician, I’ve never
pretended I was, I don’t want to be. When I made my pictures, for instance…
Directing light is very, very important to me. Lighting my model: I knew
exactly… I knew how the read shadows no one else can read on a face, but I didn’t
know how to set the camera. It’s the same for my phone: I don’t know how to use
it. It’s a phone like yours, very sophisticated, but I don’t know how to use
it: it’s too complicated. There are too many buttons, too many keys, too many
things. I’ll never be able to use that phone, it’s too complicated.
I’m not a technician, in any way, I’ve
never learned anything in my life or rather, all I ever did was learned. All I’ve
done, I’ve invented: when I cut hair, I cut it my way. When I was a makeup
artist, I knew what to do. I invented the profession. The trades I
practiced, I invented. I invented that. Makeup artists, such as they are today,
didn’t exist. I did everything:
I did the sets, I did the hairstyling, I did the makeup, I dressed my girls up.
I could have been a couturier. That’s something I could have done.
Christopher is someone I have a lot
of respect for. Our way of working is totally explainable. I don’t work with someone: I work within someone, I don’t know how to be with. It’s not my thing… I’m porous,
spongy, absorbent, I let things in. This quality was a flaw when I was little,
because I was afraid, I was always in danger: fear and aggressiveness are two
friends well-acquainted with each other. They are the same, one is the reaction
to the other, they’re two sides of a coin. So I learned to use that, and I know
how to get into someone. Not understand him, be him.
“I needed to settle a score.”
D.B.: I get the feeling L’Orpheline is the tenderest of your
recent perfumes. Especially coming as it does after Laine de Verre.
S.L.: Yes, it’s tender. You’re
right. You’re perceptive. Laine de Verre
was an extreme. It was extreme
tension, it was war. Even then, I wanted to go further. I want to go even
further than that.
D.B.: In La fille de Berlin, though it is warm, even burning, there’s a
blood note. The blood of the dragon.
S.L.: Dragon
on fire…
D.B.: It’s like a raw ruby on a Valkyrie’s
helmet. In fact, in most of your recent perfumes, there’s this current of cold,
metallic, blood notes… As though you were exploring the two slopes of incense.
Incense as a combustible materials…
S.L.: The two slopes of incense: that’s a
beautiful way of putting it.
D.B.: … fire, smoke, the combustible,
etc. And then there’s the other slope of incense: blood-like, cold, metallic,
almost like raw meat.
S.L.: I adore incense, it’s such a rich
material, especially Somali incense. It’s so pure! It’s a beauty! It’s pyrogened, there’s
castoreum… It’s a delicate balance. What you said was very accurate: “a quivering
perfume”.
D.B.: In the writings that accompany
those “blood” perfumes, you speak of your mother, directly or indirectly…
S.L.: A bit too much!
D.B.: It’s the law of blood.
S.L.: I spoke about her a bit too much,
but I needed to settle an account. I’m done with it now, it’s behind me, it’s
over. But it was very important to me to get rid of this story, which was
dragging on too much. It was taking up too much space.
D.B.: How old was your mother when she
died.
S.L.: One hundred, minus one month. Very
tenacious. But my father died young, however: he died at my age now. He died
when he was seventy-two.
D.B.: There you go: when you said: “I had
to get rid of it”, I knew there was an “at my age now”, somewhere, that had to
come out…
love these conversations with him. thanks for doing and posting them. we so often unconsciously react to the anniversaries of the deaths of those close to us -- and then there are those who take up "too much space" if we let them. yet we seldom notice or speak of these things. it's good to hear them articulated. cheers, minette
RépondreSupprimerSerge Lutens and I discussed psychoanalysis a lot during our conversation, so I guess we were both in the mindframe for something like that to come out. Glad you enjoyed the read!
RépondreSupprimer. Cảm ơn bài viết của bạn, Mời bạn xem các thông tin bài viết : Làm trắng răng với các phương pháp nào hiệu quả ?
RépondreSupprimer