French niche line Serge Lutens will launch La Vierge de Fer (the iron maiden), a new addition to the exclusive line, in September.
La Vierge de Fer was inspired by Picasso’s picture Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (see above). The fragrance reportedly centers on lily; Lutens says it is "more glorious" and heady, less fresh, than the brand's Un Lys perfume.
Serge Lutens La Vierge de Fer will be available in 75 ml Eau de Parfum.
(via osmoz.fr, cosmeticsbusiness)
Update: see a review of Serge Lutens La Vierge de Fer.
The choice of lily for these particular ladies seems a bit… ironic…? I suppose we’ll have to wait to learn more!
If we ever do learn more, right? Obviously Mr. Lutens prefers to be a bit enigmatic.
Lol! Quite. I also don’t get the “iron maiden” reference.
Oh, that’s a relief! I just thought I was demonstrating my ignorance by being confused by the apparent connection! Maybe it’s just too deep and meaningful for me?!
Ironic as in “Pictures of Lily” ironic?
Lily? Iron Maiden? What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?
In some ways, this is actually less obscure than many of his new fragrances: we know it’s lily, we know it’s not going to be less fresh than Un Lys. For Serge Lutens, that’s pretty informative 😉
When I hear “iron maiden,” I think of the metal band, Margaret Thatcher, and the torture device.
I think that’s pretty much all there is to think of? Those are the only references I know, anyway.
Margaret Thatcher was The Iron Lady.
I want a bell jar with a stylized Eddie image.
Try as I may, I can’t think of a connection between an instrument of torture and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. *puzzled*
Perhaps they hope that the perfume will impact the fragrance world in the same way the painting impacted the art world? Just kidding. 🙂
Weren’t the models prostitutes from a brothel? Without getting graphic, I would say that you could find lilies (as Leonard Cohen once used the word “lily”) and iron maidens in some brothels. Or maybe I’m over thinking this, and perhaps those are lilies in the bottom of the painting?
I could see some connections if I squint…
The painting depicts the women’s figures as solid, upright, perhaps even weight-bearing (they remind me of caryatids, and the seated one reminds me of Rodin’s Fallen Caryatid), and in that way I could see them as iron maidens, more than as related to the medieval torture device.
That said, they are prostitutes, and their faces are certainly stolid, giving away no emotion, certainly no personal connection. Two of them are so impersonal as to have become masks. It could well have been that they reminded Mr. Lutens of people enclosed in devices from which they could not escape, even when those devices are their own skin. Hardly a sensual image and not one that causes me to want to smell the perfume it inspires, but a possibility.
And a third option, perhaps the most farfetched but I am reaching – the white surfaces wrapped around the figures are folded, having almost more three-dimensionality than the figures themselves, which are so purposefully two-dimensional. Even the darker side frames (implying curtains?) are flatter than these polygons of white, which look more edgy than soft. They evoke crisp but tumbled sheets to me, especially in a brothel; I could imagine that to someone else they might evoke that curious geometry of a lily petal, that never quite looks like anything else and has that oddly spiky shape in so many stages of its bloom.
But, these are just thoughts. It could well be something as simple as that the women look enclosed, wrapped; there does not seem to be any air around them. The tight closed environment might well have just evoked an iron maiden. Who knows?
Maybe he just wants to get us talking? 🙂
Interesting choice of inspiration – the “demoiselles” were actually quite young girls, doomed to a shadow life outside of polite society. The painting was a bit of a scandal at the time. Not iron maidens at all, and not my first choice to inspire a perfume. But then, I’m not an artiste…
Those ladies look very intimidating and actually somewhat threatening and more powerful than the viewer, in a way, just as the term “Iron Maiden” sounds strong, serious, and not much fun. Strange and exotic and not familiar.
.Maybe there is some ‘irony’ (see Iron maiden) in this picture — there is a bowl of fruit front and center in the picture, and it’s rendered in shades of pink.
How often have we complained about vapid pink fruity ‘fumes made for sweet young teeny-boppers this last couple of years? I’m curious about the scent — I’m thinking that it’s going to be a powerful, edgy, sharp and dominating pink and fruity blend, possibly in a bottle that looks like shards of glass?
A reinterpretation of pink and fruity?
Un Lys certainly strikes me as heady, not so much fresh as maybe pure? Can’t wait to try this though?
I thought that as well, Lys. Headier than Un Lys? I’m looking forward to it!