L'Orpheline

Serge Lutens launched L’Orpheline in 2014. The fragrance was composed with Christopher Sheldrake, his regular perfumer, and joined the Collection Noire, the line of straight, angular bottles that the house says was created in its founder’s image.

A fragrance of childhood

As often with Lutens, the press kit gives no notes. Persolaise reads in it an interview in which the creator speaks of childhood and gender: he says he was at war with the masculine, made the father the declared enemy and the mother his figurehead.

The name breaks itself: the house writes that, before the crack, its first two syllables carry the name of the poet who could charm even stones, Orpheus. The fragrance declines grey in all its shades, like a fine film of dust settled on memory.

The house’s own words

Serge Lutens presents L’Orpheline as an ethereal, solitary and intimate fragrance, placed under the mystique of frankincense. Layer upon layer, says the house, its dust bears witness to a wounded memory, crumbling yet whole.

On its website, the house classes it in the family it calls Mohairs, presents it as a unisex fragrance and lists it among the best sellers of its perfumery, in 50 or 100 ml bottles.