Category Archives: Brands L-O

Profiles: François Coty & Lucien Lelong

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François Coty. Photo: Wikipedia

Fascism is the common thread that ties two important early 20th century figures: the perfumer François Coty and the haute couturier Lucien Lelong who, as fragrance director, made a number of excellent fragrances with the legendary nose Jean Carles. The critical point, however, is how each man responded to fascism.

The biography of one of the great noses of the time, Coty, is typically white-washed of his extreme white supremacy ideological beliefs, his raging antisemitism, and his support for fascists like Mussolini. That gap in his coverage is something I mean to fix today.

I also want to talk to you about one of my 20th century fragrance heroes, Lucien Lelong, who has been relegated to the deepest shadows of time despite having saved both Jews and the French fashion industry from the Nazis during the latter’s occupation of Paris in WW2. To put another way, he was the Oskar Schindler of Parisian haute couture. Plus, he had an intriguing personal life, like marrying a Romanov princess whilst secretly being gay.

Lucien Lelong, circa 1932. Source: Pinterest.

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Louis Vuitton Parfums: Mille Feux & Dans La Peau

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Different treatments and interpretations of leather are the focus of today’s Louis Vuitton reviews. Last time, I looked at Matière Noire, Turbulences, and Contre Moi, and now it’s the turn of Mille Feux and Dans La Peau. Like the others, they are also eau de parfums in concentration and created by Jacques Cavallier. So, let’s get straight to it.

MILLE FEUX:

Mille Feux. Source: Fragrantica.

Mille Feux. Source: Fragrantica.

Mille Feux translates to “A Thousand Fires”, a bold name that I find highly ironic for such a sheer and translucent scent.

On its American website, Louis Vuitton sums up Mille Feux as “fireworks” and an “emotional bombshell,” in addition to comparing it to aurora borealis. If my eyes rolled any further, they would fall out of my head. I mean, seriously, “emotional bombshell”?? For this fragrance?! One that basically copies a very well-known and popular designer scent from Tom Ford? If you ask me, LV’s marketing department needs to be dunked in iced water, and any hallucinogenic drugs that they might have used while concocting this balderdash should be removed pronto.

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Louis Vuitton Parfums: Matiere Noire, Turbulences & Contre Moi

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The Louis Vuitton Parfums collection. Source: nymag.com via Louis Vuitton. [Photo lightly cropped on top by me.]

The Louis Vuitton Parfums collection. Source: nymag.com via Louis Vuitton. [The photo’s white top portion has been lightly cropped by me.]

Louis Vuitton has re-entered the perfume world, almost 90 years since its first fragrance and 70 years since its last. This month, the luxury goods giant launched Les Parfums de Louis Vuitton, a collection of seven fragrances. Each one is an eau de parfum that was created by Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, a Firmenich nose who made Acqua di Gio, L’Eau d’Issey, and Lancome‘s Poeme.

Today, I’ll look at three of the new fragrances, Matière Noire, Turbulences, and Contre Moi. In the next post, I’ll cover Mille Feux and Dans La Peau. So, let’s get straight to it.

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Les Liquides Imaginaires Peau de Bete: Sex & The Beast

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Photo: Mert & Marcus from their video for Madonna, "Girl gone wild." Source: kontraplan.com

Photo: Mert & Marcus from their video for Madonna, “Girl gone wild.” Source: kontraplan.com

Sex, heated skin, animalic musk, wild horses sweaty after their ride through forests, sweaty balls, and even S&M leather — they’re all things that come to mind with the very evocative and aptly named Peau de Bete (or “Skin of the Beast”) from Les Liquides Imaginaires. An immensely animalic fragrance, it is bold in aroma, but skin-like in both its feel and soft reach. Above all else, though, its animalic muskiness is redolent of human sexuality.

While other fragrances have trodden this path before, most recently Papillon‘s fantastic Salome, few of them have done so with quite as much singularity as Peau de Bete. It strips everything away but its sexualized animalics; there are no extraneous elements like chyprish bergamot top accords or middle-layer florals to adulterate the purity of vision. It’s as though the composition were merely one, single (albeit multi-faceted) base accord. Depending on your tastes and on your experience levels with raunchy, sexual, and dirty animalic musk fragrances, that’s either a good thing or something that will make you scrub right away. I happened to think Peau de Bete was damn sexy, but it is certainly not a scent for everyone.

Peau de Bete. Source: beautik.ro

Peau de Bete. Source: beautik.ro

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