| celine | | Webmiss | | Administrateur |  | | 591 messages postés |
|  Posté le 28-02-2004 à 09:52:59    
| "Turin is an instinctive egalitarian with an exquisitely refined aesthetic and unabashedly elitist tastes, and so he felt completely comfortable in the perfume world, which is populated by former members of the lower classes who spend their time creating outrageously expensive aesthetically oriented luxury goods for the rich. He met the legendary perfumer Serge Lutens and began frequenting the headquarters of Lutens's Paris empire. Lutens was a working-class kid who started out as a makeup specialist with the estimable French firm Carita and, after successes there, was snapped up by Dior to be their chief colorist, deciding the Dior makeup line each year. In 1980 he left Dior for Shiseido. They wanted him to create their makeup line in Paris, but by this time Lutens had grander aims and worked out a nice deal: he would create their makeup and at the same time open and direct a neck-snappingly chic Shiseido Paris outpost where he would launch a new line of Shiseido perfumery (which he would design), their flagship leading-edge offerings. He had no training in perfumery and none in chemistry either, but he knew what he liked, and that, as is ever the case in fashion, was his genius. Lutens chose Christopher Sheldrake of the Big Boy Quest to be his secret engineer, building in chemicals the concepts Lutens would supply. Sheldrake, in Turin's view, is "a really interesting perfumer. He has this minimalist attitude toward perfumery and, under Serge's direction, has been delivering one wonderful fragrance after another."
The first perfume Lutens directed for Shiseido, the infamous Nombre Noir, burned a hole into everyone's collective memory.
Molecularly blacksmithed by one of Shiseido's in-house Japanese perfumers, it arose from components selected by Lutens (an extremely expensive natural osmanthus straight from the flower and a synthetic, a big-stock damascone molecule of rosy-woody plus prune-"a brilliant juxtaposition of the two," said Turin). The perfume had beautiful packaging, "the most unremittingly, sleekly, maniacally luxurious packaging you can imagine: a black octagonal glass Chinese bottle nestled in exquisitely folded black origami of the most sensuous standard." It was a 1982 issue, and Turin had heard the rumors, as had everyone else, that despite its (significant) retail price, Nombre Noir lost money because of the packaging (unconfirmable). And then it disappeared. "Just too wonderful for words, one of the five great perfumes of the world, and I have none left, none," Turin said, despondent. "I had no idea they were going to discontinue it."
Lutens's tastes in general coveted extremes, but then, that was arguably what made him a success as a perfumer, and Turin thoroughly applauded its every expression. He would go upstairs to Lutens's shop, where they would talk about perfume, and everywhere he looked were exquisite things, ancient Japanese tables and antiques and works of art. One time, Turin went to the toilet and closed the door and looked down. The toilet seat was dark red. He stared at it, tried to move out of the light, and stared at it some more. What in the world was this stuff, some weird red plastic? And then he got down on his knees to check it out. It wasn't plastic. It was red marble, phenomenally expensive red marble. He'd seen it on ancient Egyptian statues at the British Museum. He did his business, left, went to find Serge, and casually said, "So. Red-marble toilet seat, huh?" Lutens shrugged. "Bah, oui." Like why was Turin even bothering to mention it."
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Wer, wenn ich schrie, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? - R.M. RILKE
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