ParfumPlus Arabia

There is and will be only one Serge Lutens. It’s almost impossible for anyone else to be a makeup artist, photographer, filmmaker, fashion architect and perfume designer and excel at each of those domains. So what’s it to be like Serge Lutens? Creezy Courtoy helps us find out CREEZY COURTOY : MAKE-UP ARTIST, PHOTOGRAPHER, FILMMAKER, FASHION ARCHITECT AND PERFUME DESIGNER, ALL YOUR CREATIONS HAVE REVOLUTIONIZED OUR SOCIETY TO OPEN US UP TO AN OFFBEAT AND VISIONARY UNIVERSE. HOW DID PERFUME CREATION BECOME OBVIOUS TO YOU? SERGE LUTENS : These activities, these “trades” have only been centered around a common axis: the image, particularly that of “Ma Femme”. When I say Ma Femme, it is the one who since the age of reason, by a slow impregnation, haunted me. It was also the way to give voice to silence and through it, to take consistency/existence. CREATION IS PASSIVE but it activates us. From hair to makeup and then to photography, I made from this particular feminine idea, since the age of 16, my musical instrument. She was my matter, the one I materialized in an ideal form. She was violent but her integrity became an authority. FROM 1968 TO 1980, I invented and created make-up for Dior. My nature, which was opposite, almost put me on the margins, but it also brought to light an assertive behavior, expected as much by the masculine as by the feminine. I did the same with Shiseido but culminating the expression further. IN THE 90S, when the image I proposed was questioned, it was the very matter of my life that was shaken. I was looking for a relay, a link, an outstretched hand, a rope to save me from drowning or otherwise hang me! If I did not want to perish and sink into non-being; I had to face it. FROM THIS PAST in flames that my life had become, I could only take away the essential: the fire, and after it the ashes of this story to have it reborn in another form: invention of a language through the essences, a bridge between the image and the words, a long steep but obligatory path. P A R F U M P L U S 13