The limited edition La Vie est Belle signed Lady Pink
Give a name of torture to a perfume, Iron Virgin, that can only be Serge Lutens? Especially since the torture is not a torture but rather a sweet symphony where the lily holds the main note, and masterful ...
The Iron Virgin, a very curious name for a perfume?
The “marketing sauce” with which the world of classic perfumery adapts is totally absent from the olfactory, creative and imaginative world of Serge Lutens. So whatever the concepts or moralizing speeches, Serge Lutens uses his perfumes to express himself, just as a painter or a novelist creates a work, without the specific desire to sell it but just for the pleasure of sharing it. . Even if the work is shocking or the title given leaves us questioning. Because yes The Iron Virgin was torture, a name that would seem a priori therefore impossible to relate to a perfume, so much it is supposed to exude well-being and beauty and not terror.
In the present case, The Iron Maiden is indeed a provocation by its author. It titillates our fears and our deep terrors to make them come out of our skins with a perfume. Because every human is light and shadow, all of Lutens' perfumes are chiaroscuro. The Iron Madonna echoes her terribly human opposites and offers a lily that is sometimes pure and virginal, like the Virgin who has often worn it, sometimes dark and sensual like the “sublime torture” of our wounds of love.
Ode to the chiaroscuro lily by La Vierge de Fer de Lutens
The Iron Maiden is anything but a white and busy water, sad or austere as its transparent and pale bottle might suggest.
Think again, the great Lutens has trapped you again! Moreover, it suffices to dive into the first fruity and green notes of this Iron Virgin to understand that this perfume will have absolutely nothing of the torture, if it is only that the torture of resisting it… The departure is made therefore fusing and vegetal like a rise in power increased by metallic aldehydes which make us tremble.
Here is finally the precious guest of lilies which arrives at the heart of the composition and we are reassured by the ultra-feminine scents of the pretty white flower which spreads with pleasure alongside the daffodils. Much more, the lily will offer itself to deep sensualities to which it was hardly used by mixing with a burning incense and some oriental spices.
Lutens sees future followers of The Iron Maiden as “people who desire to come out of their own fear. This is the theme of this perfume: the fear that you have to overcome to be yourself. ". 1 So this odyssey in crescendo of the lily has fun making us tremble before comforting us just as Lutens frightens us with a strange name to better offer us this magnificent flowery fragrance sweet like spring and the young lady.