Écrin de fumée

Serge Lutens presented Écrin de fumée in spring 2023 as the new eau de parfum of its Collection Noire, on sale from April in 100 ml, Cosmeticobs reports. The house describes it as a dazzling, declared and inevitable fragrance, and now classes it among its gourmands.

The house writes a poem: a tribute to excessive beings who celebrate life in the most absolute luxury, until disenchantment comes. A smoke casket, it writes, a screen for our lost illusions, as tragic as it is fascinating.

A play on the smokescreen

The name plays on the French expression “écran de fumée”, smokescreen: an écrin is the case in which a precious object is kept. Serge Lutens adds a quatrain in which, to the sound of cannons, champagne corks unfurl their gowns.

Persolaise, who received a sample from the house, reports that the composition was inspired by Gatsby’s hedonistic parties, and attributes it to Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake. Cosmeticobs quotes Serge Lutens, who calls it “a superb descent into hell.”