serge lutens: 63 posts

What can one expect from a fragrance inspired by Billie Holiday’s gardenia, called Une Voix Noire (Black Voice) and created by the dream team of Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake? Heady, dark, convoluted, perhaps? Well, Une Voix Noire is none of these things. It has a surprising combination of softness and warmth. Its presence is generous, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s dramatic without being heady or dense. Une Voix Noire feels velvety the moment you put it on, and it gracefully moves from one stage to another. Frankly, if Lutens said that he was inspired by ballerina Maya Plisetskaya’s Black Swan, rather than by Lady Day, I would have believed him.

I admit that this Lutens wasn’t love at first inhale the way Bois de Violette or De Profundis have been for me.  I anticipated the heady, the dark and the bittersweet, and I missed them in this soft perfume.  Nevertheless, I’m glad that I went along for the ride, because Une Voix Noire forced me to take our courtship slowly and to fall in love with it one layer at a time.

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Serge Luten has unveiled his newest Paris exclusive fragrance called Une Voix Noire. “The stars rise in chorus. The night sky is filled with the light of the moon.  It is a tribute to the singer Billie Holiday, a reference to a gardenia she wore in her hair.

The perfume is now available via sergelutens.com, 75ml is 130 euros. Via sergelutens.com

If you’ve ever plotted to mail order a coveted Serge Lutens bell jar from Paris, you’ll be happy to know that starting this month, you can simply order the perfumes from Barneys in New York. The Serge Lutens Palais Royal collection will be exclusive to the Madison Avenue flagship boutique.

Getting your hands on one of Lutens’ glowing cloche bottles used to entail cross-Atlantic travel to his store in the Jardin du Palais Royal in Paris. But as of today, Barneys brings them a bit closer—to the Madison Avenue flagship—with the exclusive Palais Royal collection. No passport required!

Update: the price of bell jars at Barneys is $290-300 (in Paris they cost 125 euros in Paris/~$155-160). Barneys will ship to any US destination.

As I described in my post on sandalwood fragrances the other day, I’ve always had a romantic and exotic association with sandalwood. Its perfume of roses and cream–so rich, so haunting, so long lasting–seems like a whiff from some other world. Scheherazade’s palace in the Arabian Night Tales must smell of sandalwood. If so, who would be better placed to create a fairytale sandalwood perfume than the man who made a career out of worshiping beauty–Serge Lutens.

Like a modern day Scheherazade, Lutens weaves one tale after another, with the leitmotif of a fantasy running through the collection. Perhaps it is for this reason that his large range doesn’t feel redundant. Or perhaps I’m too much of a fan of his tales to be tired of them. Whatever the case may be, Santal Majuscule is the latest fragrance to cast upon me the Lutensian spell.

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L’Artisan Parfumeur is discontinuing Navegar and Tea for Two, while Serge Lutens is removing Five O’Clock Au Gingembre from its collection. I’m disappointed, since I just fell in love anew with Navegar.  Those who love these fragrances might want to stock up. Via Luckyscent.