Podcasts

THE EULOGY TO MAKEUP

- 00:14:35

Serge Lutens looks back at his conception of makeup and his relationship with painting the face. His way of “staging“ the face – invisible or theatrical, but always instinctive and inspired – made him a legend: the world’s first-ever Makeup Artist.

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What if Serge Lutens' foray into the world of make-up was only an accident of fate? Invited by Dior to develop their first-ever make-up line, the young 30-year-old quickly distinguished himself as a prodigy. In the early 70s, the American press first gave him the title of "make-up artist" and hailed him as a revolutionary. Yet no one could have foretold that Serge would become such an iconic name in the world of beauty of the time.

For starters, he rejected the feminine ideal projected by the women's magazines of the 50s, which remained straitjacketed and restricted by the norms of a previous era. Unusual techniques were reserved for a handful of professionals and models, while a more utilitarian approach to beauty was peddled to the masses. In short, eyeliners were meant for elongating the eyes and nothing else! But the winds of change were coming. The revolution of 1968 was not yet on the horizon, but the arrival of Lutens at Dior just a year prior promised to turn all notions of beauty on the head. Originally from Lille, Serge took pride in being self-taught, and had an unvarnished and uncompromising vision of beauty. Operating on instinct and with flair, he didn't play it subtle, but dared to go full throttle on colour! Serge chose strong, defined, in-your-face shades, and dared to make make-up visible! The words of Baudelaire's essay 'In Praise of Cosmetics': "Woman is an idol who is obliged to adorn herself to be adored," resonated with him. His make-up would move unprecedentedly from the eyes to the cheeks, and if cracks showed on the face of the model, even better! A clean break had been made, and it was impossible to go back. The destruction of everything that the beauty world held sacred had begun.

Soon enough, a section of society began to appropriate this way of using make-up. In just a few months, it became a formidable weapon for French feminists, who in the years following the protests of 1968, used it to break free from the outdated prison of the social norms they had long been confined by. Sure enough, Dior's sales soared in this short span of time, and following this resounding success, Serge was put in charge of a series of ad campaigns for the fashion house. With a keen eye for staging, he instinctively knew, better even than trained professionals, how to light a face in striking and bold ways: "It was a rebellious new attitude that I was trying to represent, and I just had to go all out for it. Can you imagine, red, yellow, black and purple on the eyelids? Bodies covered in sequins, make-up going from head to toe, seamless bodysuits, radical haircuts with clear scissor-cut bangs that would blend and become one with smoky eyes". From Paris to New York, women were now swearing by Serge. His bold looks that broke away from established beauty conventions spoke to their own aspirations. They knew very well, of course, that they could not walk out into the street made up exactly like his iconic photos of models with completely white faces. Buying Serge Lutens make-up meant rather adopting a new way of being, a way of shrugging off expectations to just look pretty and keep their mouths shut. It was a way of rejecting the authoritarianism of a society on its way out. In short, a polite way of telling the world to mind its own business!

Serge proved to be a versatile artist who was impossible to label. Museums from across the globe began to display his photographs, while the world of cinema tried to sway him, with the Cannes film festival screening two of his short films in 1973 and 1976. Yet, Serge Lutens began to feel a profound sense of weariness. The title of the "greatest make-up artist of the world", which the press attached to his name everywhere, began to weigh on him. He didn't want to be limited by this convenient label, even though it was a source of acclaim. He had bigger dreams for himself. In 1980, this ambition led him to take on the considerable challenge of signing on with the Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido - relatively unknown at the time - to help them expand internationally. Fascinated by Japanese culture, Serge was a Frenchman who had already built a reputation for himself through his prodigious talent. He poured his heart and soul into this new venture. As soon as he took charge, he put an end to competitor benchmarking and began to personally handle colour creation. The ‘Shiseido, by Serge Lutens’ make-up label went on to become a must-have beauty essential in the 80s and the 90s. The technical expertise of the Shiseido group and the perfectionism of Serge Lutens were a match made in heaven.

Serge was able to make the most of this experience when he founded his own ‘Nécessaire de Beauté’ line in the 2000s. An ode to the minimal, to the invisible to-and-fro between being and appearance. It was not just a product line but a philosophy of make-up in its purest form, with colours presented in cases as precious as Japanese lacquer boxes. A tribute in praise of cosmetics just as Baudelaire had conceived of it: the garb of a woman. A flesh and blood woman, brought to life through the power of make-up!

1°) Serge Lutens, you have always rejected labels and titles, yet you have contributed to the creation of the designation of ‘make-up artist’ at a time when no such line of work existed. Does the description resonate with you?

(05 :51) No, but then again, did Mishima ever see himself in the 'Confessions of a Mask'? I think it's something like that. I make my moves from behind a mask, and in fact, everything that I have accomplished and created through images has not much to do with make-up per se. My quest has always been for the construction of an image, an ideal, if you will. An image that allowed me to take on the world. So, in that sense, it is a mask, a glorious one! Like in those Noh performances, where each actor moves slowly, each action is measured, and where everything from the hand gestures to the movement of the feet carries meaning. The whole thing is an invention. The image is a woman I've invented, which means her every movement and action is precisely calibrated. She must be purely a thing of beauty. And beauty is inevitably an enigma. (06 :59) Almost to a fault. Which is to say, I am both imbued by her and am her greatest spokesperson. I am neither woman nor man, but both. I am both the musketeer and the opponent, there is no separation between her and I. The lines all blur in the end. When I create the image, there is no difference between me and her.

2°) Through all these years, you've consistently rejected trend books and other benchmarks of reference. Why is that?

(07 :33) Because I always set the trends, and because others have always taken their cues from me. People began to copy me, even though I didn't set out to do anything of the sort, having never had any formal training of any kind. I did not look for an occupation or a career; that was never my intention. When I was just starting out, I wanted to be an actor, but, you know, it was the 50s - 1956, to be precise - but I didn't decide to be a make-up artist or a hairstylist, or anything. Things just fell into place in that way. My father told me to work at the beauty salon – at the time one obeyed – it seems absurd today that one could just obey someone like that, but such were the times! I followed his orders and did what I had to do. When God wants to punish you, he makes your dreams come true. I wanted to be an actor, but never got to become one, but in the end, things worked out better that way, if you know what I mean. What had to happen, happened. The hand of God, in short.

3°) When you left Dior, you said that it was because you had developed such an aversion to make-up that you couldn't stop washing your hands!

(08 :34) Yes, like Lady MacBeth with blood. I was being put to the service of an occupation or a profession that wasn't really what I was after. Make-up began to disgust me when it became a thing in itself. That is, when I became its servant, rather than the other way round, where I was using it to achieve an ideal of beauty, the invention of a woman. Or even for what I wanted to say about this woman, and her lack, because the two are one and the same. In any case, I didn't like that it all became reduced to just a job. Besides, I can tell you, I didn't learn a thing. Nothing at all. Nothing. Everything I did there was a personal endeavour. I won't say that I was self-taught, rather that I was guided and led along. Destiny has been my biggest teacher.

4°) What is the hallmark of Serge Lutens make-up? What is hidden behind the famous "by Serge Lutens" tagline?

(09 :37) You know, Serge Lutens is just a name, my birth name, nothing more and nothing less. That is all there is to it. So how did it get here, what's all this about? Again, I can compare it to 'Confessions of a Mask', what I do today. This woman I have invented is beautiful, not just because of the make-up, but through a whole series of rituals. The various techniques, the way one adjusts and uses one's hands, how one can see beauty somewhere, and see something in need of enhancement elsewhere. I have often distinguished, for example, make-up artists who have the eye, and those who do not have this vision. They simply don't see it. Some can see, because they allow themselves to. While some want so much to control everything that they stop seeing anything at all. It's always true, that if you let yourself go and if you give yourself space, only then can you create something. (10 :38) If you want to or must be the one guiding, then you must do so while also letting yourself be guided. That's when you can let beauty express itself. You don't try to control it, you let it shine through. You can do this through the rituals and movements, you sculpt a model, you give her shape. That's what gives beauty definition. It's a kind of sculpture, you need to breathe life into her movements, her gestures, her way of being. She must understand the vision you are trying to express. Make-up dissociated from this image-making does not appeal to me, because I'm interested in the image, not in make-up itself. The same holds true for perfume, by the way. If creating fragrances didn't carry me to the world of words, perfume wouldn't interest me either. These are all just means to an end. They take you by the hand, they guide you and lead you somewhere. I repeat, it really is analogous to ‘Confessions of a Mask’.

ALONG THE WATERSIDE

- 00:13:36

Water, for Serge Lutens, has proved an obvious response to olfactory shackles and atmospheres overloaded with odours and superlatives. In 2010 it took the form of a minimalist fragrance, serving almost as a manifesto, that sparked a fresh revolution, even within his own brand.

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In 2010, Serge Lutens was at the peak of his fame in the perfume world. In just 30 years, he had gone against the tide to create a whole new handbook on perfume-making, prompting other global brands to follow in his footsteps. With more than 80 fragrances to his name, his olfactory creations became the go-to for others looking to borrow ideas. In return, and to keep up a semblance of good protocol, Lutens was showered with superlatives like genius of the bottle, perfume maestro and more. Endorsing his vision of perfume-making became a proof of quality and badge of pride for others. Seeing right through this all-out appropriation, the 68-year-old Serge decided to take a step back from the perfume industry for a while.

It may come as a surprise to some, but Serge Lutens had never been particularly interested in perfume as a social product per se. In the North of France where he spent his childhood, and in the social class where he grew up, perfume was completely absent. Style and affectation weren't high on the agenda here, where a good scrub with plain soap and a wash cloth was enough to smell good. Over time, and with gradual exposure to other environments than his own, Serge Lutens would discover perfume as worn by two or three of the clients at the hair salon where he apprenticed, not as an aspect of grooming but as a marker of personal style. The mannerisms, natural reserve and aloofness of these women drew the admiration and deference of the adolescent Lutens. These ladies represented a vision in which perfume was just a small detail...minor, yet integral to the luxury image he began to find increasingly appealing.

But it was only his discovery of Morocco in 1968, many years later, that spurred him to reinvent fragrance. Serge's perfume label became the torch-bearer of his rebellion, marking an opposition to the flurry of conventional perfumes flooding the market in the 80s. In his eyes, perfume needed to be turned back into the audacious accessory it once was; a slap in the face of the world. The bid paid off, and Lutens was greeted with enormous success in the early 90s. However, this success also had a flip side. Lutens now had to contend with the commercial opportunism and appropriation that he so despised. In an industry teeming with competition, did the word "creation" have any meaning? How could he continue to assert his opposition to the mainstream?

Serge Lutens found his answer in eau de parfum and the simple cleaning rituals of his childhood. "Luxury begins with cleanliness." This slogan appeared across a simple bar of soap in 2010 like a provocative statement. Embossing the Serge Lutens name on such an accessible product was the ultimate display of audacity. And, as if to hammer the point home, Serge Lutens accompanied this launch with what he called the "anti-perfume": ‘L’Eau Serge Lutens’. A minimalist fragrance serving almost as a manifesto, enclosed in a bottle with clean, radical lines. Transparency, purity and a return to the basics for the creator, who increasingly decried a "too-perfumed" world where it was hard to distinguish scents from one another.

Anti-perfume was a phrase that spontaneously came to me when announcing the Eau Serge Lutens. A new turn, an alternative to my initial approach to perfume-making, unique at the time it appeared, but which had become increasingly ravaged by a marketing ecosystem that drained it of all its creative value by subsuming it under the term "niche". Hence the term ‘anti-perfume’.

For I refuse to belong to all categories, let alone any single one; and if I were to be relegated to an inhabitant of a niche, I would certainly not be the plush pet of the "Dream Villa", rather a stray dog on the street.

This eau de parfum was a clarion call, and the echoes of its revolt still continue to reverberate.

Many of his fans felt betrayed by the launch, claiming that Serge Lutens had sold his soul and bid goodbye to crafting fine fragrances from rare and precious primary ingredients. But as always, Serge Lutens was far from the madding crowd. Far from the niche that both competitors and admirers tried to box him in. This clean, minimalist fragrance had certainly stirred up a hornet's nest. Unique, distinctive, loved or hated – none of it mattered to him. All he wanted was to avoid being drowned in a sea of pale imitations. In the end, how did it matter whether he was acclaimed or disgraced? Wasn't it worse to be appropriated by one's own triumph? Some chase this success their entire lives, unlike Serge Lutens, who has chosen to flee it instead. Could that be the secret to his countless transformations?

1°) Serge Lutens, do you agree with this explanation? Could your many changes of artistic direction be attributed to the success that finally managed to catch up with you?

(05 :31) Well, I never felt it to be sincere, to be coming from the heart. It was a kind of recognition by default. The only recognition that meant anything to me was when my father legally recognized me as his son, which came many years later. I don't like being well-known or known by all and sundry. I much prefer, if you like, this monstrous couple I formed with my mother. So no, I'm not interested in being recognized, I run away from recognition and popularity. I formed a cursed couple with my mother, not out of love, believe you me...but out of sin, out of a refusal to be recognized. So, I know that recognition is something that can pin me down and end up stifling me.

And I think maybe we are all a bit like that, essentially...I think often, for instance, of escaping my life. How can I escape my life? Or, how can I escape my life, without actually dying, let's say? The only way is to disappear, to take a car and head off, change how I look, put on a new face. Change everything, change my fingerprints, everything, even language. That's one thing that's not possible, actually. Culture is what remains when everything else is forgotten, we all know that. So, when we have forgotten everything, what remains? A way of holding the fork, or of rolling couscous in the palm of the hand? I don't know for sure. But it's somewhere there. Culture is what happens despite and beyond us.

2°) Did l'Eau Serge Lutens represent a rejection of the perfumes you had been making in the early 90s?

(07 :15) No, because really, I discovered and learned about perfume in Morocco. I came to love it through Morocco. I did not like French perfume at all, I didn't like the way it was formulated in France. It wasn't for me. I came to like perfume in Morocco because I came to it through the aromas and scents that pervade the air here and get under your skin. I have never worn perfume. I like making perfumes, but I don't like wearing them. There is a big difference between the two. It's a bit like houses, you see. I don't live inside them, but I design them. There is some mystery to it. Then the question arises again, what is all this for? Perhaps it can all be traced back to the original mistake.

For me the Eau de parfum was disruptive, and like all separations, it was essential. Which is to say, it was necessary in order for me to build a new relationship with perfume. But as soon as any departure becomes official, begins to have a name and become known, when it begins to be copied and imitated, well, I lose interest in it. I have nothing to do with success, which is created by others. And in fact, I cease to exist when that happens. Well, that particular me ceases to exist, in any case. I am a sort of imposter, you see, an imposter everywhere. And I like to keep it that way.

3°) The launch of the Eau was met with some harsh criticism. How did it affect you?

(08 :33) It didn't affect me at all, absolutely not! In fact, I would have quite liked to be at the receiving end of more venomous jibes and insults. They are my greatest gifts, my most precious jewels, my luxury cars and my battle scars. Either way, I would have loved to be insulted. Absolutely loved it. But the criticism didn't go that far, because the industry is just too spineless. They're all too cowardly to go that far. I would have to commit a murder for that to happen, which of course I haven't yet done. One day I hope to achieve my goal of really shaking things up.

4°) You are not immune to another re-appropriation of your work. Have you thought about what more you can do after the "anti-perfume" to maintain your opposition?

(09 :16) Well I don't know, it's not like I go against the mainstream just for the sake of it. For me, this opposition is more about constantly questioning myself and rejecting success, if you see what I mean. Success is a kind of condemnation, you see. It condemns you to stasis. So, if you surrender to success, you're done for. What I mean is you will be doomed to keep doing the same thing over and over again forever.

I am guided by lots of different things. I love perfection, but I have also discovered through literature the beauty of imperfection, the beauty of something that does not belong to the realm of the ideal. When it comes to material things, like houses and objects, there is a kind of taste, how should I put it, a restorative element to their beauty. But at the same time, I need...well, if I saw a tablecloth full of holes printed with a flower pattern, I would find it quite moving too. So, there are these two sides to me: an overly developed sense of self and taste for aesthetic perfection, and its polar opposite, which belongs to the realm of poetry or literature, and which can only be expressed through words and images. The latter forms the substance and basis of it all; without imperfection there can be no repair or restoration... I would like to return to this side of myself. The side that finds beauty in a tablecloth with holes, which is beginning to fray, where the holes of the plastic are beginning to fray, and with the flower print on top. Finding words to describe it is a thing of beauty. This is where the true work of beauty lies. The rest of it is just a kind of repair. Trying to return things to an ideal form is nothing but a kind of aestheticism in the end.

THE INVENTION OF A WOMAN

- 00:18:41

Serge Lutens name has been associated with a particular image of a woman: deified, chronicled, glorified, emerging first in his crayon drawings at school, then later spotlighted in visuals and advertising campaigns that stamped his unique aesthetic mark on an industry that was already excessively codified.

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The Serge Lutens woman made her mark on the world of beauty from the 1960s to the 1990s. She was everywhere, from the Dior ad campaigns of the 70s to those of Shiseido in the 80s and then the 90s. For decades, this iconic woman with a pallid face symbolised an ideal of absolute beauty. With her distinctive blend of sophistication and supreme self-confidence, she was quite unlike the female bombshells of the time. Yet, she remained impossible to pin down, because she wasn't made of flesh and blood. Instead, she represented the struggle and self-assertion of a man who had spent his whole life nurturing a steady dialogue with his inner woman.

Even as a child, Serge stood out in school for his drawings of women in fancy clothes: dresses made of brocade, silk, organza, and so on. These first sketches, spanning a range of fabrics and eras, proved that the boy harboured interests quite unlike those of his schoolmates. Much to the chagrin of his father, who would have quite liked him to take up more gender-appropriate activities, Serge loved queens and princesses.

By the time he became a teenager, this feminine side took over, with the discovery of women's magazines, and especially Vogue, which the young Serge quickly adopted as his Bible. Locked in his room, with his shutters drawn, he copied the poses of high fashion models from the photos in these magazines. He spent hours staring at these images, noticing and picking up on every minute detail. He absorbed the body language of these women, channelled it and made it larger than life. At the age of 14, Serge began to apprentice at a hair salon. His fascination for feminine beauty then began to find an echo in the world of cinema. Movies helped him feed his predilection and take it to the next level. Whenever he had a free moment, Serge would go to the cinema hall in Lille. There, he discovered films featuring legendary actresses such as Greta Garbo, Marlène Dietrich, Louise Brooks and more, whose faces would go on to fascinate him. More than the films themselves, it was these stars who transported him to a different world, with their radically different aesthetic from the one which predominated the 50s.

At a time when Roger Vadim's "And God created Woman" was a sensation, Serge Lutens forged a wholly different ideal of feminine beauty, which he soon began to try out on his young salon customers: razor-straight hair with a neat nape, chalk-white skin and shaded eyes. Very quickly, the young apprentice made a reputation for himself beyond the doors of the modest salon. His female customers, who had since become his friends, began to get noticed in the streets of Lille. Some of this attention was positive and some was negative, but Serge knew that what he was doing was not to everyone's taste. His quest was for the creation of an image in its most finished form. He would dig through clothes at vintage markets to dress his muses in. Androgynous yet terrifyingly feminine, by the end of the 50s, the Serge Lutens woman had already taken form. The 18-year-old was savvy enough to capture these looks using an Instamatic. In 1962, these pictures caught the eye of French Vogue, who hired the young man on the spot and instantly set him on a path to success.

Serge Lutens had struck gold. He left Lille and came to Paris, where he discovered the world of fashion magazines, make-up and beauty, alongside photographers like Avedon, Penn and Bourdin. His work began to create a buzz and he soon landed projects with other fashion magazines, such as Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Jardin des modes, quickly making a name for himself in the business. Yet, money remained difficult to come by for the young Serge. So, in 1967, at the age of 25, he decided to try his luck at Dior. At the time, the high fashion house was preparing to launch its first make-up line, and Serge rose to the occasion by creating an innovative and spectacular range of colours. It was an overnight success. Dior's sales skyrocketed, but Lutens was not satisfied. Itching to go further, he wanted to cement his name through his photographs.

Unbeknownst to the company, Serge Lutens had been creating images of his work during his time at Christian Dior Beauty. These photos brought to life the woman that had always been lying within him. Queen, woman of the streets, circus-tamer, prostitute in a Berlin brothel: in these ten years, Lutens let go off his inherent shyness to give life to this creature. He liberated her from the shackles of the straitjacket. For Dior, the shock was of an equal magnitude. Even though women swore by Serge's work and loved his visual boldness, Dior was worried for its clientele... Meanwhile, oblivious to their concerns, the young prodigy had taken flight. Despite the massive critical and commercial success that Serge won Dior, he tired of their growing worry and circumspection. In 1980, he signed on with the Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido, thus heralding a new chapter for his female alter ego. While the Serge Lutens woman had moved from Paris to Japan, her essence remained constant. She remained immobile, frozen in her perfection, even as she took on new faces and masks. A tad more sophisticated, more radically graphic, this new woman once again reflected the spirit of the 80s and 90s, thus helping the Japanese label gain a pre-eminent position among the beauty labels of the world. People were fascinated by these images, even going so far as to collect them.

Towards the end of the 90s, after 20 years heading artistic direction for Shiseido, the firm decided to end its contract with Serge Lutens, leaving him deprived of his feminine alter ego. In 2000, he resurrected her from the ashes when he founded his own eponymous label.

1°) Serge Lutens, you defined the look for your feminine alter ego quite early on. Can you tell us more about how she came into being? We've talked about your childhood, your fondness for certain actresses, women's magazines...you have yourself spoken about the role played by your mother. What is the relationship between her and this image you created?

(07 :45) Mothers are fundamental to creation, because they are your first creators. A mother brings you into the world and shows you the light. This is true for everyone, not just me, so I am not special in this respect. But in my case, my mother was accused and ostracised, so for my whole life she was blamed and I was the product of her sin. I was born in 1942, during the war. Alongside anti-Semitic laws, adultery had also been designated a crime at the time of the Vichy regime, with the intention of preventing women from cohabiting with occupants. My mother met someone, who I must stress, was not German. So, she met a Frenchman and then married him, but there was an act of adultery, an affair or something. I don't quite know, of course, because the world of our parents is often quite obscure to us as children. And I was not the only one, which is to say that nobody knew what happened exactly and nobody spoke of it. Nobody told me how they met and how I came into being. The little I was told was not enough to put the story together, which remained a mystery to me. For whatever reason, my birth was not registered, which is to say that I was not declared to the authorities when I was born - that happened much later. (08 :59) So this mystery was something I felt, because it was unsaid. Something I felt as a child, and my mother too, because we were both bound by the same fate - this is true especially for mothers and sons, rather than mothers and daughters. So, as I said, I became the child of this sin, because my mother had committed a crime in the eyes of the society and was blamed. And because I defended my mother, I became an enemy of society too. But there is one thing that can resolve and correct everything, and that is beauty. Beauty is an ultimate truth. Not the kind of shy beauty that fades into the background, but the kind of blazing beauty that is spectacular. So, the only way I can make myself whole is through this woman: I atone by the beauty I give to her, through the home I make for her but which I don't live in myself. Through this woman who doesn't live with me, but is unique and whole. I am her greatest defender and advocate. It is my way of giving her life back to her, but in the process, I sacrifice my own life. I would say it's an almost religious thing, that goes right back to an original sin and the hasty judgements of a society that has always been senseless.

2°) To the public, the Serge Lutens woman seems ageless, unchanging, timeless and unique. Many even think that it's always the same woman who plays her... Could her indecipherable mystery be part of this success?

(10 :38) I don't know about success, or whether I can claim to have attained it. All I know is that it was necessary, because if she had remained in the shadows, her beauty was doomed in some way, if you see what I mean. I find it difficult to answer your questions, because I don't myself have all the answers, if you will. What I do know is that it all started while I was very young. I had started sketching her while still in school. Every week, the teacher would tell us to draw a border in the notebook to mark the end of the week's work. A kind of line with a geometric design. So, I would draw these geometric designs and the one day, out of the blue, I began to draw these women, these sketches of women from my imagination. They came from the little I knew of Alexandre Dumas, the first films I'd seen, Milady de Winter etc. But they were always beautiful criminals. There was no doubt in my mind that criminals were more beautiful than virtuous maidens. (11 :47) And they always had red-hot iron brand marks on their upper arms. As it happened, my mother also had the scar of an abscess on her upper arm, which in my mind's eye became one with hot iron branding. It was a sign perhaps, something that left a deep mark on my unconscious. And the unconscious mind is very strong, because, in a way, I need to be accused to be creative. And it is through this woman that this creation takes place. That is to say through the model, who I have to make extraordinary, more beautiful and more astonishing to my eyes. Her beauty must be terrifying. Remember the Evil Queen, who asks the question "Who's the fairest of them all?" to a mirror that replies, "yes, my Queen, you are the fairest in the land, but..." This "but" implies that she is beautiful but that Snow White is more beautiful than her. Yet, the Evil Queen has the beauty of willpower, while Snow White has a bland, unquestionable kind of beauty. So, for me, it is the Evil Queen that is more beautiful in the end, you see. It's a monstrous thing to say, but that's how I am: I need to be monstrous to be alive.

3°) One often referred to her as the Dior woman, the Shiseido woman... Did you to try to make this woman fit in with the identity of the groups you worked for?

(13 :17) I don't think it was ever a question of group or work for me. I am too lazy to work in the traditional sense of the word. Which is to say that I just like to do things; it doesn't cost me anything. Creation doesn't drain any of my energy, in fact it is quite the opposite: I gain energy from the process. And Japan was already there. When I arrived in Japan, this idea was already there in the way of creating and working. This was also true of French haute couture at the time I worked in the field, which is to say it was still high fashion in the true sense of the word. There were iconic models and there was the dressmaker...a collection had almost a religious quality. It was like attending mass, nothing like the banal spectacles of today. A mythical ode to a woman who stood outside reality. So of course, French haute couture as I experienced it at Dior was right up my alley. Dior and Shiseido were poles apart, but I had the same feeling with Morocco as well. In Morocco too there was this idea already in the scheme of things. So, some part of Morocco, of Japan and of French haute couture resonated with what was already in me. It was like coming home to myself - I know it sounds quite pretentious to say - but in short, I saw myself reflected in them. I discovered Morocco, Japan and French haute couture around the same time, and all three had this characteristic. These countries and cultures had already arrived at this way of seeing and being seen.

4°) What would you say to those who ask: who is the Serge Lutens woman?

(14 :53) I don't honestly have an answer to that. Who is she? She is an ideal, she is the accused, she is the one I defend and honour, the one I strive to make beautiful, but who also ruins my life. So that's how it is, because of course the way you describe her is spectacular, beautiful and magnificent, but I've missed out on my own life to defend her. She is my whole life, period. That is the way God willed it for me. Like the story goes, a fairy arrives by the child's crib after birth and whispers "you will be so beautiful, that the whole world will fall in love with you." That was not the wish in my case, if you follow. Nor either: "You will be so intelligent that the whole world will be dazzled by your thoughts and your words, and it will be extraordinary" In my case she said: "You will go through something very different and difficult from the rest of the world, but you will find your happiness through work." Something like that. "But you won't fit in with the rest of the world, because you will always defend something which they find indefensible, even if they don't say it out loud.”

LITERARY AND ARTISTIC INSPIRATIONS

- 00:20:30

Serge Lutens reminisces about the images, sounds and words whose echoes still resonate within his personal œuvre : the literary inspirations and cinematic works that have marked his career and fired his imagination.

00:00 00:00

A creator like no other, Serge Lutens' fields of artistic expression only grew with the years: from make-up to set-design and costumes to photography, cinema and perfume-making – he did it all. Over half a century on, the artist from the North of France birthed a whole creative universe that matched his immense talent and outsized ambition. His style was utterly unique and stood out in the sea of competitors. Admired and looked up to by the greats, and sometimes even blatantly copied, it's almost easy to forget that he also grew up with his own cultural references.

Let's start with the most unexpected among these... After the second world war, at the age of 6 or 7, a young Serge Lutens went to the cinema for the first time, where he discovered Snow White, the classic Walt Disney heroine. The darkness of the hall, the sensation of my fingers moving against the grain of the red velvet seat I sank into, and the company of my mother all created a kind of bubble in which I saw "Snow White" and which sealed its memory in my mind's eye. I was utterly spellbound! Was it the beauty of Snow White or her tragic fate that moved the child so much? It's hard to know for sure, but it’s clear that, from a young age, Lutens sympathised with characters whose lives were troubled. The misfortunes of "Pauvre Blaise" by Comtesse de Ségur or "Little Annie Rooney" by Darrell Mclure resonated with him almost certainly because they reflected his own dull and drab existence. But adolescence was to bring a change of direction for Serge Lutens. Transformed by the discovery of old films he saw on the TV or in the cinema halls of Lille, he developed a strong affinity for female characters and the strong, charismatic actresses who played them, like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. The story and plot mattered little to him, so taken was he by the mere presence of these stars on the big screen. Like a sponge, he absorbed each movement, each lift of the eyelid. From the sophistication of Marlene to the sculptural beauty of Garbo, films taught him the power of the image like nothing else. He was equally impressed by the German expressionism of the initial films of Murnau and Lang, in which all was angles, contrast and chaos. The young Serge found in all these, a distinctive and striking beauty fundamentally different from the one that dominated the scene in the 50s and which he increasingly began to reject, without quite being able to explain why.

Indeed, Serge felt quite unable to analyse or put into words the rebellion that had been brewing within him for years on end. His shyness had compelled him to keep his head down for a long time. A mercurial child with a basic school graduation certificate apprenticed fresh out of hairstyling school at the age of 14, Serge had always been a bit out of step with others. He was wary and distrustful of all kinds of intellectualisation, especially through words. But a fateful meeting would change this belief and the course of his life forever. In 1960, Serge Lutens met Madeleine Levy in Lille, who would go on to become his partner-in-crime for many years, and later also his companion. Stepping through the doors of his salon for a haircut, the street-smart young girl brought up in Morocco fell irrevocably under the spell of this young man, as shy as he was bold. 12 years his senior, Levy immediately recognized his unique talent and swept him away with her to Paris. She had a small antique shop in the city, where she spent most of her time reading and smoking cigarettes. Here, she introduced Serge – barely 22 years old – to the writings of Jean Genet, who had a scandalous literary reputation. Madeleine read out the novel Our Lady of the Flowers to Serge herself. The transgressive violence and explicit, free-flowing poetry of this work opened new horizons up for Serge. A dizzying delight!

In two or three years, he went from barely reading at all to completely devouring the collected works of this cursed and solitary author: The Thief's Journal, The Man Sentenced to Death... Genet, became the condemned soul who would go on to become his companion for life. In the 70s, when one of his acquaintances offered to arrange a meeting with the author, Serge refused, saying: "What have I to say to God himself?" More classical authors also found a place for themselves among his list of literary icons: Baudelaire, Proust, Mishima, etc. Yet, none of them would ever match the significance of the author of Funeral Rites, a book to which Serge Lutens would return throughout his life, whether just to browse through or completely dissect. "Down to the bone": Admiration or love were weak words for his feelings towards the author. Woe betide anyone who tried to set foot into his kingdom, which Serge guarded jealously as his private turf! The domain of the damned was not for everyone. Serge Lutens has borne testimony to this singular truth from the beginning of his career, without any explanation or elucidation. Some have considered this a kind of elitism, while others have seen instead an enigma to be solved. Either way, Serge Lutens has created a world tailored to his unique vision for more than 50 years, becoming an icon for many others in the process.

Serge Lutens, you often shrug off or reject the use of the term "Inspiration" when you're asked about your own. Why do you dislike this word so much?

(06 :33) "Inspiration" is, well… it's something like… well it's not "inspiration", as such, like Cocteau said, but "expiration", something that is released rather than taken in. Creation is something that is put out into the world, while inspiration would mean something that you keep within, and that's not what it is. But the word bothers me really, because it is used for what the world “officially” considers artists. Because you see there is a host of such artists, right from Zorro to the fairy queen. And I find that a bit ridiculous. I don't like it at all. To me, that's not what an artist is. Artists cannot be qualified in these terms, for their gifts are God-given and their creations divine.

Your main and strongest influences have been writers, yet your work has been essentially visual over the years: photography, cinema, etc... why doesn't one find more painters and photographers among your sources of inspiration?

(07 :31) Inspiration takes many forms, and occurs at many levels. Which is to say that we are made up of thousands of things, not just one or two, and even if I named just three it would be quite reductive! We are all composed of both good and bad things, an aggregate that makes the whole. There is no escaping it, I mean, we are all human beings, with a wide array of emotions, often even contradictory ones. I came to books later in life, while the visual image made more of an impression on me, especially images of women, if you like. This led me to invent my own image of a woman, because one only invents something one desperately needs. This label, this way of being, of thinking, these perfumes – they are all my ways of existing and moving through the world. They were absolutely necessary. So, I would say, there is no such thing as art, only artists, if you see what I mean. In my view, a baker could be a great artist, and so could a grocer. I don't see the need to separate these things into professions in this way, I don't like putting things into boxes, whether in art or anything else. It is not for the artist to declare himself an artist, in fact, those who do so are quite phoney and hollow.

You've called "Snow White" one of your first sources of inspiration. But the saccharine world of Disney is quite the antithesis of the one you invented. How would you describe the impact of those images on you?

(09 :08) Well firstly, it was the first film I had ever seen in my life; I had never seen any before it. And we didn't have television. So, I went to the cinema. And what was cinema at the time? Luxury, well, luxury the way I saw it. The velvet seats and armrests. So, I saw the film quite late, I think, with my mother, who accompanied me, because I was little. I must have been 6 years old or thereabouts, I'm not sure. And for me it was seeing all those images, with the music, the dwarves singing in the diamond mines, the walls already gleaming with multi-coloured stones, the house and the Evil Queen, who also became one of my muses, because a child has both the Evil Queen and the Snow White in him: the beautiful, sweet loving girl as well as the wicked, cruel, mean mother. "Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" "Famed is thy beauty, Majesty, but hold..." Oh, it was something so special for all the boys watching the film for the first time, a kind of enchantment, surely the first film I saw in a certain way. And, of course it was an animated movie, Snow White, which made it a bit too sweet, but then children are made of sugar, spice and everything nice. We are made up of all these flavours, we carry them within us, including the bitter and the sour.

Jean Genet holds a special place among the people that you admire, which is something people are curious about. The connections with Proust, Baudelaire and even Mallarmé seem more obvious to the general public. What about this author makes him stand out in your eyes?

(11 :07) His words. The choice of words, the beauty and intelligence of his words, the depth of his characters. When he says "He is 16 when he reaches the landing," – who else could say a thing like that? And there you have Our Lady who is about to kill the old man to steal his money. "He is 16 when he reaches the landing." And then the door opens, and he enters and then there is a whole succession of words, whose impression I cannot even begin to describe. He could have been 16 at the foot of the stairs, but no, he is 16 when he reaches the landing. And that's the beauty of it, that's what changes everything. This way of putting words together and looking at them. Because you know often when one says something, one uses a turn of phrase as a course of habit, in a way that one has heard before and is just repeating. But starting from a blank slate, that's where writing begins. True writing cannot happen without wiping all that from the mind. Everything must be broken down and destroyed, even forgotten. One must forget everything to be able to write, and to be able to speak anew. In that way he was an anti-establishment man, as opposed to the conventional man with his ready-made words, sentences, mannerisms and superficial airs. No, with him, there was complete invention. And invention is a matter of gaze, of approach. (12 :42) You must observe the world, and then return to your words. You must put them together in a way that makes them pure, and then you must defile them again. Because that's what literature is, nothing more, nothing less. If you are simply repeating the words of others, you're dead on arrival, because then there's no point to writing, unless you're a journalist, which is different. Writing is a kind of murder, an annihilation of the past to birth something new.

Still, it's important to note that Jean Genet could not have existed without Proust. Proust completely changed the way people read. He observed his characters from the inside, stripping away from just the external descriptors, if you will. He entered into them, took them over, wore their clothes. He lived through them. The 42 facets as described by the Prophet – he explored all of them, he tried them on for size. You can't do this if you're not fully immersed in the web of life, if you don't have the zest for life. Creating means becoming another. If you are always inside yourself, you're damned. The other is the source of richness and diversity. Going beyond the self, that's how I would describe my encounter with Morocco and Japan, as well as my encounter with people. That's what interests me. But I remain a man of reserve. I would like to write, but I'm full of restraint. Writing is a kind of self-sacrifice, you see. You have to forget, destroy words, then bring them back to life and put them back in new and different ways. A sentence demands complete destruction. That's what I'm trying to tell you, in fact, and that's what I like about Genet, which is that he is first and foremost a rebel.

Without rebellion, no creation is possible. We see it with Baudelaire too, who turns a head of hair into an ebony sea with a dark, black swell, and perfume into something that passes through glass, devouring its flask. You see the beauty of it, like desire captured in a bottle, like magic, like Aladdin. You see how one can play with words in this way, throwing them into the air and then catching them, like a juggler. That's what writing is. But if you confine writing to respectable – which is to say, boring – speech, then it loses all its power. One must live and breathe words. And to live, one must die first. And it's something one has to do all the time, because writing is not a one-off exercise but a constant endeavour.

You do realise that you yourself could become a source of inspiration to others? How do you feel about it? What legacy do you think you will leave behind?

(15 :42) I am not looking to leave a legacy; I don't even know what that means. I don't think about legacies and what I could leave behind. We are all grains in the sand: each individual is but a grain of sand on an enormous beach. Just think about it! What are we in the grand scheme of things, when we know that a grain of sand is just a rock or bigger block eroded down to its size? Which brings me back to Genet and his definition of Beckett. When he was asked "What do you think of Beckett?" he replied, "a prodigious grain of sand." A wonderful turn of phrase. Nothing, yet immense. One doesn't know what one leaves behind, because one doesn't really know what one is doing at the time one is doing it. We do things, and then we leave them. What others make of it, well, that's not really our lookout. I don't really know what will happen in the future, but there is the hope and desire to push myself further, because I have been silent for a long time. I think I will finally begin speaking, I mean, through writing, but not necessarily with the intention of becoming a writer per se. Becoming a perfumer or becoming this or that has never appealed to me. My dream is for all of it to be razed to the ground.