Serge Lutens THE VISIONARY

@rsergelutens

Obtaining a response from Serge Lutens to an eager list of questions is akin to an archaeological breakthrough. The so-called reclusive French perfumist is not known for flirting with the media.

He’s perhaps best known for his discerning nose, but Lutens has also dabbled in photography, filmmaking, fashion design and art direction, always maintaining a comfortable distance from prying eyes. This makes the recent opening of his Marrakech home all the more beguiling.

For 45 years he has worked on its restoration with a deliberation and determination that is hard to fathom. The gilded carvings on the ceiling of one tiny salon, for instance, took six years to complete.

The clichéd labour of love is real here. Lutens fell in love with Marrakech when he first visited in 1968, aged 25, just as his friend Yves Saint Laurent had famously done two years before. He says he was captivated by the dust, the night, the joy he perceived, and especially the scents. Cedar wood and “warm, honeyed scents emanating from the stalls selling leather work” would later inspire his cult fragrance, Féminité du Bois. “This small taste of Morocco gave me a glimmer of freedom, which until now I had not experienced. All of a sudden, everything lit up and things started to make sense for me.”

His most famous compatriot was of course Saint Laurent, about whom he says: “We had a meeting of two spirits and what comes naturally; reciprocal admiration and jealousy.” Lutens truly settled when he found his one-hectare property — “a crumbling house which had an exuberant garden” — in the heart of the medina during a visit in 1974. Since then he and an exorbitant number of local artisans have worked on its restoration in a manner both ornate and accurate to the house’s own history — a combination of 19th-century European, Moorish and colonial Moroccan. He regrets a little the occasion he oversaw 500 people working on his house at once. “We discovered quantity didn’t necessarily mean quality.” And the project continues. Despite tours now operating courtesy of the Serge Lutens Foundation and Marrakech hotel Royal Mansour, Lutens is by no means done and dusted. “Each time it is completed, I find another way to make it even more beautiful. If time allows, I would like to complete this house and then restore it to how it was originally. What’s next is still very vague at the moment; only time will tell.” ››