L’Orpheline was launched by Serge Lutens in 2014 in his Collection Noire, composed with Christopher Sheldrake. The house reads in it the mystique of frankincense, grey in all its shades to express the cracks of a childhood, and a name whose first syllables evoke Orpheus, the poet who charmed stones.
Dariush Alavi (Persolaise) praised in 2014 an incense that sinks into a powdery, reassuring softness; Elena Vosnaki (Perfume Shrine) placed it between L’Eau Froide and Serge Noire; Victoria (Bois de Jasmin) smelled only a mineral laboratory fog in it.
Olfastory’s review
Dariush Alavi, Persolaise
In June 2014, Dariush Alavi considered that Lutens’s press kits deserve an attentive reading, precisely because they refuse lists of notes and invite us to take the fragrance more seriously than a lipstick.
He describes a fragrance that sinks into a downy softness, a velvety powder, as reassuring and elusive as a memory, whose benzoin facet reminds him of the closing moments of Frédéric Malle’s Géranium pour Monsieur.
Elena Vosnaki, Perfume Shrine
In July 2014, Elena Vosnaki placed L’Orpheline between two of the house’s incenses: less cold and soapy than L’Eau Froide, less spicy and shady than Serge Noire, somewhere between dog and wolf, at dusk.
She sees in it a cool, quiet fragrance that gradually warms up, like Gris Clair, neither a true Moroccan oriental in the manner of Lutens’s classics nor a traditional French perfume.
Victoria, Bois de Jasmin
In September 2014, Victoria, who loves incense and Lutens, admitted that L’Orpheline does not win her over: it reminds her of the air in a laboratory, a fog dominated by a mineral note. She concedes that it at least stirs an emotion rather than a sense of déjà-senti.