02/20/2024
Intersport
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Detour V - L P P - R I P - ? !
After just five years, Le participe passé was removed from the Lutens range in last year's restructuring alongside my favorites such as El Attarine (2008). Now, five years is nothing special for many manufacturers, but it is for Lutens, which has had a large number of similar 'special interest' fragrances in its range for two or three decades. Sign 'O' the Times. To mark the occasion, I'm revisiting my old text on this fragrance - I found Le participe passé too quirky, idiosyncratic and, above all, likeable.
*
Through the repeated, consistent use of 'bois' since the beginning of the 90's, Lutens is certainly - historical examples à la Bois des Iles (1926) excluded - partly responsible for countless 'bois' titles with other manufacturers, or entire brand names. There are over 400 entries in the database here alone. When I first heard of Le participe passé, I realized that grammatical forms would probably never achieve similar popularity as titles, but it is certainly a memorable name.
Le participe passé was the result of an interesting development that was to be followed by several closely related releases. in 2014, Lutens began releasing fragrances as a perfume concentration, in the same, classic rectangular bottles the brand used for its, at times, 'export line' to emphasize the distinction of the bulk bottles long only available at Palais Royale - these, categorized as Section d'Or, were priced at around 500 EUR, and represented a significant price-jump, especially given Lutens' still reasonably moderate prices at the time; on top of that, Lutens was not throwing any notes into the speculative space here at all. The packaging was exquisite, perhaps one of the best examples of the long tradition of gift packaging in Japan: an inner carton made of seemingly textured crepe paper, a plastic outer shell colored in a gradient from dark to transparent, the mechanisms for removing the actual bottle so well thought out that they simply work and at no point cause any surprise or headaches about product design. An experiment? It remained to be seen how long this would last in this constellation of contextualization and price at this point in time - and on top of that, some of these fragrances were not easy fare. Bourreau des Fleurs (2017) was the last of this series, I recommend Gold's review of it, an abstract floral fragrance with a carrying immortelle note despite its title.
Apart from its olfactory profile: Bourreau des Fleurs was the impetus for three or four further releases: Le participe passé, L'Innommable (also 2018), L'Eau Armoise (2019) and La proie pour l'ombre (2021) - the green thread in all of them is a strongly modulated, yet central Immortelle-like note, although this is consistently concealed in the marketing; only in L'Eau Armoise was it briefly referred to at first, but soon rowed back.
This was not always the case: even with Chergui (2001), for a long time certainly the brand's driving force, Immortelle was mentioned directly as a contributor in print advertisements in the early 2000s - which spoke of 'le Parfum du desert', i.e. the scent of the desert, as a subtitle: But Santal de Mysore (1991), Arabie (2000), Chêne (2004), Chypre Rouge (2006), El Attarine (2008), Jeux de Peaux (2011) also relied on immortelle, sometimes more clearly, sometimes more abstractly, the complex, often already dominant character of the note is illuminated in the most versatile way, Christopher Sheldrake seems to have spent a long time on it. Perhaps the trio or quartet based on Bourreau des Fleurs was also an internal announcement of this long-standing preoccupation?
Le participe passé starts with green mugwort, far more clearly than in L'Eau Armoise, but Le participe passé is only herbal and refreshing for a few moments, the spectrum quickly shifts: at the time of publication, 'Egyptian balsam' was mentioned here, the name of an edible, date-like fruit, Balanites aegyptiaca, which also fits well into the picture, but its name was soon dropped. Abstractly dry-fruity, more tart than in Arabie, for example, less concrete than in El Attarine, less wild berry-like than Chypre Rouge, paired with a viscous, more summed texture than concrete conifer species pine(?) resin note, overlaid with menthol-like streaks, embalmed meters high, almost mummified, massive, but difficult to grasp. Beneath it slumbers something immortelle-like. In the year of its release, I was able to look into IFF/LMR's 'Immortelle extrait', this extremely dense product, which also resembles Le participe passé in its coloration, starts with a malty, bitter, almost coffee-like note, which at first has little in common with the typical smell that the plant gives off in vivo; Le participe passé picks up on this quasi savory-gourmand aspect, slightly syrupy, burnt sugar, but not explicitly sweet, with celery-like spicy nuances (à la L'Être Aimé Homme (2008)) - and stretches it all out, a kind of molecular time-stretch. This facet resembles the 'soy accord' from Comme des Garçons Series Luxe: Patchouli (2007), albeit one that I have imaginatively isolated.
I can imagine that this non-floral, non-Hesperidic, non-classical-ambient, non-western-orientalist, but in the best sense thoroughly spicy perfume with such a title should not be a hit and possibly defies description in a 'sales conversation' - unpronounceability ultimately became a theme with L'Innommable from the same year - perhaps that is also why Le participe passé remained an underexposed fragrance, which, with all the more internal references mentioned, was very unique.
*
Through the repeated, consistent use of 'bois' since the beginning of the 90's, Lutens is certainly - historical examples à la Bois des Iles (1926) excluded - partly responsible for countless 'bois' titles with other manufacturers, or entire brand names. There are over 400 entries in the database here alone. When I first heard of Le participe passé, I realized that grammatical forms would probably never achieve similar popularity as titles, but it is certainly a memorable name.
Le participe passé was the result of an interesting development that was to be followed by several closely related releases. in 2014, Lutens began releasing fragrances as a perfume concentration, in the same, classic rectangular bottles the brand used for its, at times, 'export line' to emphasize the distinction of the bulk bottles long only available at Palais Royale - these, categorized as Section d'Or, were priced at around 500 EUR, and represented a significant price-jump, especially given Lutens' still reasonably moderate prices at the time; on top of that, Lutens was not throwing any notes into the speculative space here at all. The packaging was exquisite, perhaps one of the best examples of the long tradition of gift packaging in Japan: an inner carton made of seemingly textured crepe paper, a plastic outer shell colored in a gradient from dark to transparent, the mechanisms for removing the actual bottle so well thought out that they simply work and at no point cause any surprise or headaches about product design. An experiment? It remained to be seen how long this would last in this constellation of contextualization and price at this point in time - and on top of that, some of these fragrances were not easy fare. Bourreau des Fleurs (2017) was the last of this series, I recommend Gold's review of it, an abstract floral fragrance with a carrying immortelle note despite its title.
Apart from its olfactory profile: Bourreau des Fleurs was the impetus for three or four further releases: Le participe passé, L'Innommable (also 2018), L'Eau Armoise (2019) and La proie pour l'ombre (2021) - the green thread in all of them is a strongly modulated, yet central Immortelle-like note, although this is consistently concealed in the marketing; only in L'Eau Armoise was it briefly referred to at first, but soon rowed back.
This was not always the case: even with Chergui (2001), for a long time certainly the brand's driving force, Immortelle was mentioned directly as a contributor in print advertisements in the early 2000s - which spoke of 'le Parfum du desert', i.e. the scent of the desert, as a subtitle: But Santal de Mysore (1991), Arabie (2000), Chêne (2004), Chypre Rouge (2006), El Attarine (2008), Jeux de Peaux (2011) also relied on immortelle, sometimes more clearly, sometimes more abstractly, the complex, often already dominant character of the note is illuminated in the most versatile way, Christopher Sheldrake seems to have spent a long time on it. Perhaps the trio or quartet based on Bourreau des Fleurs was also an internal announcement of this long-standing preoccupation?
Le participe passé starts with green mugwort, far more clearly than in L'Eau Armoise, but Le participe passé is only herbal and refreshing for a few moments, the spectrum quickly shifts: at the time of publication, 'Egyptian balsam' was mentioned here, the name of an edible, date-like fruit, Balanites aegyptiaca, which also fits well into the picture, but its name was soon dropped. Abstractly dry-fruity, more tart than in Arabie, for example, less concrete than in El Attarine, less wild berry-like than Chypre Rouge, paired with a viscous, more summed texture than concrete conifer species pine(?) resin note, overlaid with menthol-like streaks, embalmed meters high, almost mummified, massive, but difficult to grasp. Beneath it slumbers something immortelle-like. In the year of its release, I was able to look into IFF/LMR's 'Immortelle extrait', this extremely dense product, which also resembles Le participe passé in its coloration, starts with a malty, bitter, almost coffee-like note, which at first has little in common with the typical smell that the plant gives off in vivo; Le participe passé picks up on this quasi savory-gourmand aspect, slightly syrupy, burnt sugar, but not explicitly sweet, with celery-like spicy nuances (à la L'Être Aimé Homme (2008)) - and stretches it all out, a kind of molecular time-stretch. This facet resembles the 'soy accord' from Comme des Garçons Series Luxe: Patchouli (2007), albeit one that I have imaginatively isolated.
I can imagine that this non-floral, non-Hesperidic, non-classical-ambient, non-western-orientalist, but in the best sense thoroughly spicy perfume with such a title should not be a hit and possibly defies description in a 'sales conversation' - unpronounceability ultimately became a theme with L'Innommable from the same year - perhaps that is also why Le participe passé remained an underexposed fragrance, which, with all the more internal references mentioned, was very unique.
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