Féminité du bois, thirty years on

Serge Lutens : Wood was there long before I was. The cedar is said to be the only tree that God planted with his own hands. 1968 was the year of my first trip to Morocco, to Marrakech. My senses, all five of them, were, as one might say, in a state of sub-human fascination. It seems to me that at this point Morocco acted as a revealer. My sense of smell was dormant. However, it was all there; the nose was not blocked, but like the mind, too busy to be precise in one of the areas of sensuality. The more I wandered through the complex network of Marrakech’s alleyways, the more it seemed that the smell of cedar, at once animal, pastry-like, sweet and pervasive, was imposing itself on me. It was in a small metal box (previously containing throat candy) that a few shavings and a piece of this wood, before being transferred to another box, took their place in my mind and only grew there. The promise was in these words: “One day with you, I will make a perfume”. This promise was more akin to the wish of a child who would later aspire to fly an aeroplane, but who, in saying so, would only remember its speed, or of the same child who, in saying he wanted to drive a lorry, would only remember its power, or of yet another who wanted to drive a tramway, only to be put on the rails without asking himself where he was going.

Whichever side it rests on, this sculpture or woman would be a nasty surprise for anyone hoping for precision. No, the wood is really feminine, or at least this one is, and no doubt even the rose belongs more to the boy than to the girl, who belongs to the sun and he to the moon.

I don’t really know. Perhaps the tree, the woman and myself are confused in this perfume.

Daring is not a choice but a necessity, a way of surpassing oneself, of breaking out of the shackles, of letting out a cry that has remained in the back of the palate for too long.

I liked smells, but I didn’t like perfumes. Without really knowing how to put it, they bothered me, they were out of place. They were social products. However, perfumery as it was and as it is today doesn’t interest me any more. I think, dear Isabelle, that you and I talk about perfume to make it say something else. It has taken the place of someone or something in us, and perhaps to defend this unknown, we fight against the invisible; crossing swords in this case is crucial. We all take up our cross.

Mystical and sensual are the right words. Antinomian, yes, because at the same time, these two entities combine and fight each other. Féminité du bois has a long history. Its development is tedious, but we’ll talk about it again, if you like.

I don’t think the origin of this fragrance is a wood, but a determination to use this material as a pretext. Getting away from ourselves, from what imprisons us, takes unexpected paths. Perfume is a bridge stretched between images and words. It’s scabrous because at the same time, I hope that in this hopeless advance, because we never reach it, we’ll arrive… but much more often we’ll fall.

It was a personal and complex process, because I had to convince a group; opening a place in the least lively place in Paris was a real challenge! (The boutique Les Salons du Palais Royal, editor’s note). It was more the principle of getting out of this magma that was perfumery. But it was a lost cause, because the whole industry was quick to use marketing to get hold of an idea that up until then had only been personal, but that’s all in the past now.

Does the image of a drill speak to you when it pierces a knot so tightly that to get through it, the tendril has to force it to such an extent that the pain smells so good it makes Freud look stupid!

I can’t define the word ‘love’ enough. It’s an all-purpose word… Like “beauty”, for that matter. In both cases, these two feelings, if they live up to their promise, should surprise us, astonish us, overwhelm us. To define them or, through them, to define ourselves, would be to betray them.