Back to Marrakech: Perfume Inspiration

Back to the origins of perfume:
MARRAKECH

"Up until the late 1960s, I had no interest in perfume whatsoever. It was during a trip to Morocco in 1968 that it took hold of my senses and reawakened my past.

Over there, I saw women armed with long poles, hitting the orange trees to bring down the blossoms, which they collected in large white sheets laid out on the ground like a blanket of snow.

"Marrakesh Pink" - Royal Theatre in The Rose City/The Pink City/The Red City; 

Names for the Jewel of Morocco ~ Photography by Edwin de Johgh via pinterest

My walks through the medina of Marrakech completed this rediscovery of the fifth sense. There I felt the voluptuousness and sweetness of different woods – a mingling of air, sun, dust and the scent of animals, diffused by that confection of woods: cedar being carved in the tiny carpenters’ workshops I passed.

These impressions became so firmly implanted in my mind that, in the early 1990s, I set about creating Féminité du Bois, which made its mark in the perfumery world. A few years later, I reaffirmed my interest in perfume by creating Ambre Sultan, which began as a small piece of amber, which I also found in the souks and had kept in a small thuja wood box. The scent that was released when I opened it was exactly as I remembered it."

Serge Lutens