La Vierge de Fer: Between grim shadows and pure light... There are classic perfumeries and there is Lutens perfumery. An artistic creation of the moment, a poetic wild escape where marketing-driven perfumery is set aside in favor of original notes and names just as unconventional.
The world of Serge Lutens perfumery is a mysterious and colorful world, luminous yet sometimes dark, where fragrances are born as if to astonish us all the more. The man is an artist who loves to create original but above all unprecedented fragrances. For his compositions, he surrounds himself with one of the finest perfumers, and perhaps also one of the freest: Christopher Sheldrake, of course! And for this fragrance named after an instrument of torture, the torment will be divine...
La Vierge de Fer, a composition that plays with our fears to carry us toward the light
Ever since their meeting for the revolutionary and spectacular Féminité du Bois at the end of the 1970s, Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake have continually composed grand, poetic creations together, ones that above all stand miles apart from the commercial standards of perfumery today.
Because both men are imaginative and above all want to preserve their free creativity in composing rare fragrances. While one offers his emotions as scents, the other, the technician, shapes the great Lutens's wishes into fragrances.
Perfume has today become a socio-cultural product. Personally, I prefer to go down to the bottom of things; a true underground velvet, or velvet underground, as they say in English, that is: what is us and what we need in order to step outside ourselves. Serge Lutens for 20 Minutes.
For La Vierge de Fer, the two men amused themselves by creating a fragrance entirely opposite to the image conjured by its name, which refers to a medieval torture device. They also departed from their chiaroscuro compositional principles to carry La Vierge de Fer toward a luminous halo of white flowers, greenery, fruit and warmth.
So do not be surprised to find no icy, steely freshness in this La Vierge de Fer. On the contrary, La Vierge de Fer and its floral-fruity scents grow, as one discovers them further, increasingly warm. Serge Lutens always delights in blurring the lines and playing with antitheses, and this La Vierge de Fer is the perfect example.
Rose, jasmine and lily for an original scented bouquet named La Vierge de Fer
Serge Lutens does not like to reveal the ingredients of the compositions that the magician Christopher Sheldrake has developed for him.
So, following the master's own account, La Vierge de Fer would be composed of aldehydes at the top, lily at the heart and incense in its depths. In reality, many other raw materials help propel us from cold to warm in this curious La Vierge de Fer.
Thus the top aldehydes are, in the end, relatively understated, contrary to what one might have been led to believe. Indeed, it is the green notes, but above all the fruity notes, that greet us in this La Vierge de Fer. According to specialists, these notes would be scents of pear, apple, or even banana or white peach! Serge Lutens loves discovery, and he hides these juicy fruits from us in order to create it all the better.
Yet this is not the only surprise this La Vierge de Fer reveals. For the virginal, powerful lily goes on to bathe in the very Lutensian world we know well, yet one that no one expects from this fragrance: the Orient and its spices. La Vierge de Fer is thus a rare journey that begins with the freshness and fruitiness of nature at daybreak and closes in a beautiful, spellbinding, spicy warmth of which only Serge Lutens holds the secret.