Serge Lutens Une Voix Noire: fragrance review & draw

The melancholic timbre of Billie Holiday's voice, the "black voice" behind the inspiration for Serge Lutens's latest Paris-exclusive perfume, is reverberating through the unusual paths of the fumes rising from the bell-jar bottle with its beautiful brownish, maroon almost, shade of juice inside. The waxy, thick petals of gardenia with their irresistible browning that is poised between sweet rot and carnal abandon have a way of capturing hearts like mine...and Billie's too, who wore one tucked beneath her ear as a trademark. But to designate just gardenia to Une Voix Noire would be doing it a disservice.

Guy Bourdin photo via thinmoonsugar.blogspot.com

Gardenia and tuberose are olfactory allies in crime. Both nocturnal creatures with creamy white blossoms which exude a kaleidoscope of weird and wondrous facets, from sharp greenness that recalls camphor, to blue cheese and mould, all the way to meat rotting in the heat to help attract various pollinators, they're fascinating flowers to cultivate in a warm climate that oozes with the dangerous atmosphere of a film noir. Lutens and his trusty perfumer Chris Sheldrake have been no strangers to tuberose's wiles thanks to Tubereuse Criminelle with its jarring contrast of rough edge against smooth silk.
But Une voix Noire is to gardenia a new take on the flower, less simplistic and more complex, with an abstract background that brings it closer to a Bois variation than a fleshy, photorealistic photo of the opulent flower with its blue cheese timbre that Tom Ford put in the forefront for his (now discontinued) Velvet Gardenia or the spring-like styralyl acetate greenness it exhibits in Lauder's life-like, budding Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia. The candied plumminess of the cedar & fruits base is certainly progeny of the Feminite du Bois school of mock dilettantes (posing as less serious than in reality) and the rich, satisfying, warmly honeyed core to be explored on further wearings would be most pleasurably received by those who have enjoyed Mary Greenwell's Plum, Botytris, Jar's Jardenia and -naturally- the rest of the Lutensian series of "woody" cedar & fruits melange fragrances.

The perfumer and the art director play in chiaroscuro with extreme grace in Une voix Noire, bringing on an opening tuberose-gardenia note that is fresh and real but dissipates fast into clean and metallic notes that ring like cold air in the stillness of the night. Smoky and indolic, almost animalic facets slowly reveal themselves, darkening the proceedings through a sweetish, leathery, tobacco and boozy (rum, according to the official notes) phase which creates an effect worthy of a blues singer velvety sighing her pain into hard vinyl.

Like Billie's voice, Une Voix Noire is indelible...lasting a lifetime and then some.



Une Voix Noire is a Paris-exclusive Lutens fragrance available as Eau de Parfum 75ml in the bell jar bottles.

For our readers, a generous decant of the new Une Voix Noire is available. Draw is open internationally till Friday 28th midnight. Just answer in the comments what "a black voice" conjures up for you to be eligible. Draw is now closed, thank you!

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Serge Lutens news & fragrance reviews

Serge Lutens Une Voix Noire: out now!

Remember we had talked about the Paris exclusive bell-jar coming out of Le Palais Royal de Shiseido in September back when we had announced both Lutens releases for this year? The other was of course the stupendous Santal Majuscule, for the export market.

Une Voix Noire by Serge Lutens (a black voice) is finally out for purchase in Paris and online at the official Lutens site, tagged with the cryptic -as always- text: "The stars rise in focus. The night sky is filled with the light of the moon." Read a bit more about it on the link provided, before we embark on a full review shortly.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Serge Lutens news & fragrance reviews 

Serge Lutens Une Voix Noire: new fragrance

The upcoming Lutens fragrance which I have been in the lucky position to confirm about before its official announcement is called Une Voix Noire (a black voice) and is reprising a few of the master's favorite themes: darkness in name and mood, homage to mythical personalities, narcotic effects....

Une Voix Noire is Serge's homage to Billie Holiday, the doomed blues singer with the penchant for gardenia which he used to put in her hair (indeed lots of photographs of the singer show her sporting blossoms on her dark hair). And true to form Lutens choose this white flower in all its heavy, ripe glory to represent his idea of darkness against the whiteness of its petals. After his forway into carnation with Vitriol d'Oeillet, the master reprises flowers, giving them his unique touch, hopefully much like he did with Tubéreuse Criminelle and Un Lys.
Following in the footsteps of the discontinued but revered Velvet Gardenia by Tom Ford, with its mouldy, wet, mushroom-like ripe ambience, could the Lutens gardenia Une Voix Noire be the next gardenia perfume to make a dramatic entrance in the cosmos of the perfume cognoscenti?

Une Voix Noire will be presented in Paris on June 1st 2012 at Les Palais du Salon Royal in Paris, France. From then on it will be available commercially in the Paris exclusives line in the bell jars this summer.