The garden of the Serge Lutens Riad in Marrakech is fresh and seems to play with time. Perhaps that's why the interview dragged on, mint tea in hand, until it became a conversation suspended in the air. Memories carried by the wind. “It smells like air, water, earth and shadow, availability, oblivion, obsession… the smells I prefer,” explains Lutens, “revolutionary of beauty in all its forms,” according to Diana Vreeland's description when she was editor. boss of Vogue. Laurels, olive trees, palm trees…
“Here I feel free in a state of reflection,” he told us. It is impossible not to think of that enormous and enchanted Riad, with echoes of the Alhambra and in permanent evolution – more than 40 years in the making – when turning on one of the elegant diffusers of the collection of five home fragrances that Serge Lutens is now launching.
The aroma turns back the clock to recall empty living rooms that, when we visited the house, seemed to be on silent standby. The diffuser fits into the environment, of course, not in vain Lutens has designed every last detail of each room, each craftsmanship, each table, cushion or corner. Darkness and light in rapid contrast, like his always unpredictable mind. As the creator summarizes, “Perfume is a bridge between image and word.”
Lutens enjoys “evolution itself,” which is why he never stops imagining and creating. Soul, knowledge and consciousness like origami folds in life and work. Music and literature, fashion and beauty illustrator, star makeup artist, author of “niche” perfumes before the same concept existed… he says that he writes “to try to read me, to outline me and decipher me.” Teller of olfactory stories, master of emotions. Each of his fragrances “represents a moment in my own existence.” They are different, subjective perfumes, which also seem created to challenge us.
Marrakesh. 1968 and Proust's madeleine effect when Lutens experienced his particular awakening of the senses. Michael Edwards, author of the book Perfume Legends, said of him: “Serge Lutens is to French perfumery what Marcel Proust is to literature… he creates perfumes with Proustian accents.”
In Marrakech, smell took over from his keen eyesight to open the doors to a very intense emotional world, to childhood memories that he had even forgotten, and to an urgent need for artistic expression through aromas. “There are perfumes like there are novels. As far as I'm concerned, they have always had both a literary and olfactory origin. “What is evoked through perfume and its name is related by a type of expressed unconscious that can only be written through feeling,” he commented in his garden.
The book À Rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, inspired Lutens with the idea of wandering the world through the aromas of home. The main character, Jean Des Esseintes, could be the literary incarnation of him. A man who fills his house with works of art and rare objects, dedicating his time to idleness and study. He admires painting, reads a lot, creates perfumes...
Lutens has created five atmospheres for five very defined home environments: La Maison Japonaise “subtle, fine and attentive” announces itself with incense, bay leaf and clove leaves; the Scottish one, warmer, smells of dry stones, wool, coffee, oak wood and leather; The Maison Arabe, a reflection of his house in Marrakech, is “sumptuous, generous and enveloping; Le Jardin Arabe Mesk-El-Laïl (night jasmine) is floral and bright, with a touch of honey and L'Armoire à Linge a clean and comforting aroma like a linen closet. Perhaps when you open the door of these houses the voice of Maria Callas sounds, whom the creator adores... as long as it is not when you get up in the morning. So I can't stand her,” he confesses!
