Serge Lutens
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The almond crashes in immediately—assertive, almost medicinal in its intensity, like crushing marzipan between your teeth whilst inhaling deeply. There's a hint of cherry kirsch hovering at the edges, that peculiar stone-fruit quality that bitter almond always carries, before the rose begins its slow emergence through the sweetness.
The white florals unfurl into something genuinely opulent now, jasmine and rose tangling together in a powdery, slightly soapy embrace that never quite shakes off that almond spectre. The musk arrives properly, adding a skin-like quality that makes the whole composition feel worn-in, lived-in, almost intimate in its proximity.
What remains is pure Lutens comfort—ambery, vanillic, resinous warmth with just enough almond memory to remind you where you started. The powder settles into something softer, more diffuse, like the scent lingering on a cashmere jumper after a long evening out.
Louve is Serge Lutens at his most unapologetically hedonistic—a gourmand composition that veers dangerously close to confectionery without ever quite tumbling into the saccharine. Christopher Sheldrake has crafted something that smells like the ghost of marzipan haunting a rose garden at dusk, all bitter almond cyanide married to the plushest white florals. This isn't the clean, soapy musk of modern perfumery; it's dense, almost suffocating in its sweetness, with that telltale Lutens thickness that sits on the skin like velvet soaked in honey.
The almond here is the star—not the polite, cherry-adjacent almond of mainstream fragrances, but something more insistent, more chemical, recalling both amaretto and the faint toxicity of stone fruit kernels. The jasmine and rose push through this gourmand haze like powdered Turkish delight, their indolic edges softened by musk that feels more animalic than clean. Underneath, the amber and vanilla create a resinous base that stops the whole thing from floating away into pure patisserie territory, grounding it with just enough darkness to keep it interesting.
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3.8/5 (146)