Serge Lutens Fumerie Turque: fragrance review

Fumerie Turque (Turkish smoking salon) is one of the most majestic scents amidst the Serge Lutens impressive line-up of orientalise compositions that draw upon the vast tradition of the Middle East and its specific languor of the senses. It evokes the honeyed, rich tobacco blends which the Seljuk sultans reserved for their seraglios overlooking the Bosporus, the narguilé blends warming up with milky, rosy substances added to prolong the languorous enjoyment, the hour of contemplation.

Lutens and his perfumer, Chris Sheldrake, created an autumnal oriental for sensualists, men and women who appreciate the tender, soft embrace of a leather-lined guest salon, where the smell of sumptuous balsams, rich tobacco, dried fruits and honeyed rose loukhoums waft from across the canopied beds of the harem.

Its scent never fails to make me yearn for inchoate habits I never indulged, traditions which call upon a far heritage passed on by generations, and of lands which are never as far as away as imagined, but instead lie within a day's reach. Fumerie Turque is my personal piercingly erotic dare to the deceptively familiar.