Serge Lutens: "The desire never left me" (Exclusive interview)

Serge Lutens came into my life when I was barely a teenager. I discovered the hieratical, blade-sharp beauty of his women in French magazines and knew I had found my Neverland. Years later, I stumbled on his alchemist’s den while visiting the ghosts of the Palais-Royal, and it has been a haunt ever since: his work opened up the world of scent to me and made me veer from perfume monogamy to olfactory polyamory...

Then I met him, and it seemed to me we recognized each other, but that may have been the fantasy of the thirteen-year-old girl in me. There is something magical about Serge Lutens’ sylph-like presence and his light-footed dancer’s gait. Which is probably why his answers read like riddles and verbal glissés… When they’re not swift jabs to the jaw.

Here are those he’s graciously given to the questions forwarded to him in Marrakech, for the launch of Boxeuses (“Female Boxers”), a Russian leather wrapped in Prunol coming out this fall at the Salons du Palais-Royal, and Bas de Soie (“Silk Stockings”), the iris-hyacinth which went on sale yesterday as part of the export line and will be launched in August. I will be back with reviews. For now, forgive the translation: there is something so deeply French about his way with words that any attempt to render them into English fails to fully capture their essence. Meanwhile, meet Monsieur Lutens…

Denyse Beaulieu: Those who’ve been wearing your perfumes for a long time felt betrayed by L’Eau Serge Lutens. Now you’ve come back to a more opulent register. Was your desire reborn, or was it the thread of the story that you picked up again? Was L’Eau Serge Lutens the Boxeuses’ feint?

Serge Lutens: Treason is the very principle of creation, if there ever was one. I was only following what I felt. It seemed vital to me to destabilize a given that was becoming generalized and orientalized. The desire never left me. Tying and untying, but above all, avoiding being bound by this thread, which could trap me inside a self that would only belong to others. L’Eau Serge Lutens is a jab, a K.O. in the first round in the face of sham!

D.B.: Leather is not an essence but a view of the mind, a perfumer’s construction. What does the leather in Boxeuses say that hadn’t been expressed in Cuir Mauresque or Daim Blond? Or should we look towards Féminité du Bois, whose plum accord it reprises?

S.L.: All those accords have long been forgotten and are part of the past. Boxeuses is more of a birch leather (i.e. a Russian leather). If you’re asking me what my perfumes are composed of precisely, that’s all behind me, and so to speak, forgotten. My past doesn’t interest me much. It’s done. Let’s say that this is a fighting leather worn by a female boxer in silk stockings (but here, I’m having fun).

D.B.: After the austerity of Iris Silver Mist, Bas de Soie plays on a very different iris – a powdered marquise or a courtesan of the Palais-Royal… It’s very French, isn’t it?

S.L.: I don’t know. If you think so, but I’d rather say that it is a perfume at the center of doubt; that the beam balance never settles between iris and hyacinth in the main accord, which is what makes the composition interesting. It is this play on hesitation that offers its subtlety.

D.B.:You’ve said that Bas de Soie was born of a phantasmagorical image. Do you think that wearing a perfume is a way of creating a dream-world doppelganger, a parallel life for oneself?

S.L.: I’d say that above all, it’s the name Bas de Soie that delighted me. It answered to the perfume. Is wearing a perfume creating a doppelganger? Why not, but then, in the sense of gathering yourself through one of your parallel facets.

D.B.: In the bottle, perfume is nothing yet. To live, it needs skin, air and imagination; a meeting between the perfumer’s story and the story of the person who wears it. In a word, I am the performer of my perfume, like an opera singer is the performer of a composer… Would you agree?

S.L.: Yes, absolutely. Mind you, some people sing more in tune than others!

D.B.: You say very little about the composition of your fragrances. Are you annoyed to see them scrutinized and analyzed, in blogs, for instance?

S.L.: In yours, not at all. Grain de musc is certainly grain of salt… but it’s very well made. What’s more, the words or sentences of a novel may be analyzed, but the novel itself remains a mystery.

D.B.: Do you consider that Christopher Sheldrake is the interpreter of your ideas, or a creative partner? Do you speak to him at length, or do you understand each other without spelling things out?

S.L.: I’ve been working with Christopher Sheldrake since the origin of Féminité du Bois. I met him in Japan. What happens between two people, through a collaboration in the words given by my very receptive personality, makes the person who’s listening porous, I don’t know why.

For a while, I thought of filming my working method with Christopher, but I gave up because I know that in front of the camera we would probably be placed, he and I, in a position that could bring out a narcissistic aspect, which would have skewed the way the film was understood. The magic and the invisible thread that binds us would disappear. We would be working for the film.

The invisible is impossible to determine and my role cannot be defined by a profession… this disorients the Americans, who like to determine the non-determinable.

My involvement is to suggest essences and direction. I know where I’m going and so does Christopher Sheldrake (it’s his job). The real partner, the core, is the perfume. It takes you where it wants, but never against my wishes.

D.B.: You have told Elisabeth de Feydeau, when speaking about Féminité du Bois, that some perfumes could be bettered by reformulation. How so?

S.L.: In general, it’s not by choice. When the batches run out, laws change and you must find the “ideal” solution which can, on occasion, allow a re-reading of the perfume that will be positive, or even more than that. At any rate, that’s what I strive for.

D.B.: Restrictions on raw materials will soon force perfumers to stop overdosing some materials, like you did for instance in Féminité du Bois. Are you afraid of being hemmed in by regulations?

S.L.: I’m facing this now, and it isn’t simple: I twist, I bypass, but if restrictions became too limiting, I don’t know if my perfumery could endure, or even if I’d stay interested…

D.B.: In North America, many cities and companies ban fragrance because they are afraid that employees will sue them, claiming perfume makes them sick. What if this olfactophobia reached the Old World?

S.L.: Sometimes I can understand the employees’ reaction, in other cases, they can just drop dead! As for the difference between the Old and the New World – if it exists – it is losing ground daily!

D.B.: The tradition of classic French perfumery, which used animalic smells to conjure the body under the silk, is succumbing to the pressure of clean, of fruity shower gels, of regressive cupcake smells. Do you see yourself as a resistant to this pastry and laundry wave?

S.L.: I keep my distance. Waves only concern those who know how to swim. As for myself, I sink like a stone and I drag you to the bottom.

D.B.: “It matters very little that her tricks and artifices should be known to all, provided that their success is certain and their effect always irresistible”, writes Baudelaire in his In Praise of Cosmetics. Is this your philosophy of perfume and makeup?

S.L.: Of course, I adore Baudelaire but it seems to me that all that’s kept from him is his skillfulness with words and that the incisive quality of his poetry is forgotten. The Baudelarama of the French cosmetics industry is starting to bore me stiff! What’s more, do I really have a philosophy? If I do, it never leaves cruelty, which is to say, beauty.

D.B.: Those fibulas on your walls… are they daggers or shields?

S.L.: Only jewels, walls of jewels, but there are still a few gaps. I want to fill them, c’est le comble!

D.B.: Are you writing these answers with a fountain pen or on a keyboard?

S.L.: A Bic pen, three colours. I have hundreds of them. There are less every day: I lose them, I find them again, but they never run out.

Portrait of Serge Lutens courtesy of Parfums Lutens P.R., with all my thanks to Serge Lutens>