Serge Lutons Focus

Hey guys!

Whilst in lockdown, I wanted to share with everyone a follow up to my Makeup Artist focus and highlight the world of Serge Lutens. I took photos of a book I bought in Paris for these, so hopefully they’ll be a great resource for people to study as I couldn’t find a lot of these in HD.

So where do I even begin with the legendary Serge Lutens? I guess the first time I discovered him was through the incredible Shiseido adverts in the 90s. So do you describe Serge as a filmmaker? An artist? A graphic designer? A perfumier? How do you even put into words what he does, because he does it all? And I wanted to follow in his footsteps in that type of way because I always see myself as a creative in that type of way, I’m not interested in painting on someone's face. I love the image that that person can create when they’re styled under my direction. 

So when I won You Generation, I wanted to do something for my mum who had never been to Paris. She’d traveled all around Europe as a child but she’d never gone to Paris. So I booked the flights and we made some plans to do some cultural sights, and off we went! I wanted to go explore some of the backstreets and boutiques and we explored the Square that houses the Serge Lutons store, so it was by chance that I ended up there and it was a strange synchronistic moment. I bought the coffee table book, spoke to the store staff and they gave me a book of his incredible fragrances, so it was really an awesome chance to even be there because I never would have known about it.

So the person behind the name was born in 1942, and the book was fascinating because the biography was actually talking about Serge in more of a third gendered way, a mix of male and female and, obviously looking at the images,, that’s something that has been revolutionary in his work. He did this stuff years before contemporary artists and I think the finesse in the execution for the time is outrageous and really beyond my comprehension as an artist. This stuff is shot on film, so it’s not engineered by clever technology. 

You know of the high-end fragrance line, but the person is fascinating. He was born in the North of France and basically was thrust into the world of beauty when he wanted to be an actor. Finding a discipline in that area, he was an exceptional perfectionist and he actually contacted French Vogue himself. In 1962, he worked on the Christmas issue at the age of 20, and it led him onto this extraordinary journey. At 25, Diana Vreeland referred to him as the master of freedom and the revolution of makeup, and he began to work with Dior. Combining inspirations from Japan and Morocco, it was a style of itself. He wasn’t just working as an artist with the photographers of the time, but he was developing his own skills. So all of this self-driven work ethic with creative playfulness is something that just resonated with me and why I enlist Serge as one of my highest inspirations.

In the 80s and 90s, he worked with Shiseido, which are those incredible images we are all familiar with. He then began to develop more of a development in the senses whilst in Morocco and his fragrance interest was expanded. His foundation is also based in Medina and so this love affair with the Middle East was solidified. 

Everything that he creates has a signature style to it and he really is a master of our times, so please check out his brand and foundations.