Serge Lutens

Founded 1992 · Paris, France; laboratory in Marrakesh, Morocco · Serge Lutens

Serge Lutens came from make-up and photography, not perfumery, and built a house that smells like nobody else: dense, resinous, uncomfortable on purpose. Féminité du Bois changed nineties perfumery and is still a reference.

History

Lutens worked for Dior and then for Shiseido, where in 1992 he launched Féminité du Bois, a high-pitched cedar with plum that was the first perfume to put a wood at the centre of a feminine. With Shiseido he opened the Palais Royal salon in Paris in 1992, and out of it came a whole house with a logic of its own: literary names, bell-shaped bottles and a perfumery that does not set out to please quickly. It became independent in 2015. He has worked with the perfumer Christopher Sheldrake almost from the start.

Iconic models

Féminité du Bois (1992)
Cedar and plum. It put a wood at the centre of a feminine perfume, which nobody was doing.
Chergui (2005)
Tobacco, hay and honey; the warmest and best-loved of the house.
Ambre Sultan (1993)
A resinous, herbal amber, among the most-cited ambers there are.

Worth knowing

Lutens is not a perfumer: he is an image director. He conceives the perfume and Christopher Sheldrake composes it. It is a two-handed authorship the house has never hidden.