Showing posts with label L'orpheline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label L'orpheline. Show all posts

Friday, December 5, 2014

Limited edition of Serge Lutens L'orpheline

One of the loveliest designs on perfume bottles sneaked itself into my inbox. The Christmas edition of one of my most worn in 2014 fragrances, L'Orpheline by Serge Lutens, has a spectacular engraved bottle Édition gravée “Croix de cimetière” (i.e. cemetery cross). I admit that although I'm not exceedingly particular about bottles (compared to the contents, I mean, otherwise design interests me immensely), this one caught my breath.


" Elle se met en quatre pour vous faire plaisir. L’orpheline, c’est du fer en dentelle. "
- Serge Lutens

She is so eager to please you. The orphan girl, iron dressed in lace.

Feast your eyes on it, because this super rare edition of L'Orpheline comes in only 9 numbered and dated bottles, monogrammed SL,  fetching really high prices.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine:
Fanciful Perfume Bottles
Serge Lutens News & Perfume Reviews



Friday, July 11, 2014

Serge Lutens L'Orpheline: fragrance review & sample draw

Much like the mysterious (and incestuous) half-sister in Leos Carax's  radical adaptation of Melville's Pierre: or, the Ambiguities (1852) in "Pola X", the specter of the missing family member being visited while in almost somnambulist state, L'orpheline (the orphan girl), the latest Serge Lutens fragrance, becomes "un visage….sans age…une souffle, une presence" (a face…ageless…a breath, a presence) which disrupts the flow of a seemingly smooth, luxurious life with its secret of a tormented and deprived past. And again much like the play of light & darkness throughout the film by Leos, L'orpheline presents a play between the cool and warm register, between madness creeping underneath love, and between comfort emerging where you least expect it. Like Pierre, Lutens, you see, views himself as an artist in love with reckless gestures, only thankfully his charm lies not in any thorough immaturity. On the contrary, he has revealed intimate, personal stuff to us with the maturity that comes from acceptance.


Serge presents the new perfume in these words written in a vertical sequence: " Friable mais entière.À demi-mot, son nom se fêle. Avant la brisure, les deux premières syllabes portent le nom du poète qui même pouvait charmer les pierres. " Lutens of course winks at Orpheus, the legendary Greek poet and prophet who charmed every being with his music and tried to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the dead by way of his skills, only to meet with his own death from those who could not hear his divine music…which ties with the cryptic text he has written on L'Incendiaire, his other fragrant release, in a new "golden line", announced here a while ago. How's that for two shots with one stone?

Does Serge try to bring back his repressed beloved, his mother, a small bit at a time, with each of his fragrances? Possibly. Lutens is a grown Remi (after Malot's "Sans famille"), on a journey of the roads of France, on a journey of the roads of perfume. And like Carax or Rivette or any master of that school, he certainly takes his time into letting us share his journey.
The poetic concept of the "orphan", "fragile but whole" (this is a French expression that really loses in the translation), is inspired by Lutens's own childhood, "of ashes" and rage, his painful memories of being raised without a mother and abandoned by his father, though the change of sex in the fragrance name suggests a Freudian transposition regarding the significance of the Father (as suggested by Lutens himself). He conflates the male with pain ("le Mâle : le mal"), an Oedipal symbolism that doesn't go amiss. Nor is it intended to.


For this coolish and quiet fragrance (sequentially warmish, like Gris Clair) named  L'Orpheline, Lutens and his sidekick perfumer Chris Sheldrake focus on incense notes, not as cold and soapy as in L'Eau Froide, neither as spicy warm and shady as in Serge Noire, but somewhere in between; entre chien et loup, between daylight and darkness. Frankincense, the impression of bittersweet myrrh and peppery-acrid (elemi? cumin? ginger?) rather than clove-y carnation notes seem to rise, a cross between spirituality and carnality? Lutens knows how to marry contradictions and swath the opulence of orientalia into Parisian refinement. The spicy note in the heart reminds me of a mix between mace and cumin, reminiscent of both Secret Obsession (the now discontinued Calvin Klein fragrance) and a lighter Serge Noire by Lutens.

Yet the end result in L'Orpheline is apart; neither a true Moroccan oriental like hardcore Serge fans have built an online cult out of, nor a classically French perfume for the salon, but a mysterious, vaporous emanation "between the storm and clear skies", between the ashes of the past and the uncertainty of the future, a Delacroix painting, a dwindling match leaving embers behind. The peppery accent on the incense reminds me of the treatment of carnations in Oeillet Bengale (one of the best releases of the year so far) while the musky underlay is soft, subtle, meditative and not entirely without a certain poignancy.

L'Orpheline would suit anyone who like Pierre "had been waiting for something", regardless of their sex. Haven't we all?


L'Orpheline is an haute concentration fragrance, meaning more concentrated than the beige label ones, belonging in the "black line" of the so called "export range" by Serge Lutens. It will retail at 99 euros for 50ml, is already at the Palais Royal and eboutique and will be widely launched internationally on September 1st.

One sample out of my own decant to a lucky reader commenting below. Draw is open till Sunday midnight.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Serge Lutens L'incendiaire and L'Orpheline: new fragrances

"I use the word section [d'or =golden section] to describe a breakaway, a separation. This departure from a black world brings forth a bright new division.


This divided version of me awakens a forgotten yet timeless image from the very first moments of my life. To the right of me, touching the edge of my shadow, in another light, it illuminates a crown, one that could belong to my other.

I am the protagonist in this story, turning my anger into passion. My aggressiveness hides my fear and mends my courage. L’incendiaire provides me with the spark I need, and by declaring my flame I ignite what burns within me, and consumes me. My heroine surges from deep within my cowardice and my flaws reveal the golden brilliance of her virtues. It is the love which sustains me in my darkest hour, even as I grieve for its loss.

Your crimes are mine, and I take them with me to the guillotine, where the executioner is waiting to cut the ruffian’s – my – story short.
But my destiny is entirely in your hands!"

~Serge Lutens (the translation from the French comes from official PR material)

This is the (familiarly cryptic) text accompanying the upcoming release of the new Serge Lutens fragrance in a separate new "line" with gold label, L'Incediaire (the arsonist, the pyromaniac), coming up soon. If you notice Lutens explains the introduction of the new line in gold labels with a few words suggesting they make a break with the black labels, bringing forth a new idea, like his "Eau" line was separate in concept than the rest.

The name L'Incediaire suggests (but isn't conclusive) of an incense-y resinous or sulfurous composition, but the actual fragrance notes include geranium, carnation, woods and incense featured prominently.

Brace yourselves for another wild ride! Priced at 600$US no less (that's the retail price of Serge Lutens L'Incendiaire)


photo taken by MaryseFelix on ink361.com, borrowed for display purposes only

For those who keep an eye on such things, another Serge Lutens fragrance is coming up, just released in Paris for the summer launch, this time in the oblong bottles of the more widely available "export" line, called L'Orpheline (the Orphan Girl). It is an haute concentration fragrance, meaning more concentrated than the beige label ones, belonging in the "black line". {Edited to add: I have just written a fragrance review of L'Orpheline on this link}



" Friable mais entière.
A demi-mot, son nom se fêle. Avant la brisure, les deux premières syllabes portent le nom du poète qui même pouvait charmer les pierres. "

Lutens of course refers to Orpheus, the legendary Greek poet and prophet who charmed every being with his music and tried to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the dead by way of his skills, only to meet with his own death from those who could not hear his divine music…

The poetic concept of the "orphan", "fragile but whole", (shown in the video watchable above) is of course inspired by Lutens's own childhood, "of ashes" and rage, his painful memories of being raised sans mother, though the change of sex in the fragrance name suggests a Freudian transposition regarding the significance of the Father (as suggested by Lutens himself). He conflates the male with pain ("le Mâle : le mal").


The new Lutens fragrance L'Orpheline features top notes of aldehydes, with a heart and base composed of woods (cedar prominently), a fougere accord, coumarin, "clouds of ambergris", patchouli, incense and Cashmeran ("blonde woods").
The fragrance of L'Orpheline will retail at 99 euros for 50ml, is already at the Palais Royal and eboutique and will be widely launched internationally on September 1st.
The limited edition bottle for L'Orpheline, a series of numbered bottles for collectors at a much more elevated price, is a beautiful, familiarly Lutensian design of few evocative lines, as you can see in the photo above.

This Month's Popular Posts on Perfume Shrine