Inside The Mythical Mind of Serge Lutens

SERGE LUTENS: It’s been over 50 years now that Ive been working with brands — 14 years with Christian Dior in the ՚70s, which was a makeup line that I invented because it didn’t exist before and Shiseido in the ՚80s. I wanted to do something minimal after those experiences, a beauty line that was the opposite of expansion. Just what was necessary. My collection is divided into two parts: One is about something you don’t see, but that changes everything, and the other is something that does better than nothing at all. I look for products that are very close to invisibility, but that change things dramatically.

SL: Color, for me, is about the effect. For example, I want silence to fall over the entire restaurant when a woman enters. I like surprises, shocks, something aggressive and audacious. Armed lips — that’s a desire to appear and to stand out. You need that to give yourself courage. But I don’t want to make makeup that you can see, so I come up with matte sorbets and powdery-mattes, which to me, are more elegant, ethereal, and refined. I look to create something that doesn't leave any trace behind, where you can feel free to move and talk. The secret is that I hate everything, and that allows me to make something that I actually like. I don’t like big hairy eyes, for instance. I don’t think it’s beautiful because you lose the shape. So I did a mascara called Cils Cellophane, which is completely transparent that just defines your eyelashes a little bit. It’s like the North Pole of eyelashes — just a little icy touch. Beauty is something that should shine. It’s as simple as that.

SL: I’m not very tricky. I do things, but they work in that moment or for that model. I used to add a little dash of color underneath the lips and a little on the earlobes. It is nothing at all, but it brings an audaciousness and an interest. Changing the color of eyeshadow, replacing gray and black with yellow, it is all improvisation.

SL: Nuit de Cellophane calls upon your imagination. It’s a way of expressing with words what the perfume is. Cellophane is what was used to cover dresses in the 1930s in France. You would open it and hear this crinkly noise that made you feel a certain way. Sometimes I purposefully attack with my perfumes. There’s a refusal in creation every time. But everything’s in the name. Gris Clair, for example, means light gray, which says it all. The idea of gray and light is an association of adjectives that I really like.

SL: Not the word, that’s for sure. The word happiness over-promises. There are things that put us in a good mood from time to time. I can’t do without sugar, and I love chocolate. I love Twix. I could eat 10 or 20 of them, but that’s a way of compensating. It’s not happiness; it’s delicious compensation.

SL: It’s already great news that we’ve reached the 20-year mark. It’s a miracle. In 20 years, I will be 98, so I don’t know. Tomorrow doesn’t exist for me. Tomorrow is today. I’m working on projects, but there’s no prediction. There’s an image, but it changes as well in time. It’s a matter of going back and forth between this, that, and the other thing. I still maintain the hope that I will change myself. I don’t know whether that’s a form of utopianism, but I would like to change, too.