De profundis Serge Lutens 2011

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8.0 / 10 245 Ratings

A popular perfume by Serge Lutens for women and men, released in 2011. The scent is floral-green. It is still in production.
Pronunciation

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Main accords

Floral

Green

Spicy

Smoky

Fresh

Fragrance Notes

Chrysanthemum

Frankincense

Ratings

Scent

8.0245 Ratings

Longevity

7.5212 Ratings

Sillage

6.5216 Ratings

Bottle

8.6201 Ratings

Value for money

6.641 Ratings

Submitted by Kankuro, last update on 26.02.2024.

Reviews

8 in-depth fragrance descriptions

08/30/2020

10
Bottle 7
Sillage 7
Longevity 9.5
Scent

Gandix
88 Reviews

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Gandix

Top Review 54

November

They were arguing.
Often.
When she got upset, he would laugh That made her even more upset But when the going got tough,
they held together,
pulled together.
Nice,
Worries,
not always easy,
but a good life Love...
Today she visits his grave.
No, it's not decorated with carnations,
he never liked them Chrysanthemums, purple, shiny, like velvet.
It's November,
Fog comes up slowly.
She takes a candy,
it's been in her pocket for a while,
the taste slightly like mulled wine.
Against the lap in the neck,
that keeps rising.
A lonely tear glistens darkly in the corner of her eye.
She had cried a lot,
a whole lake of tears A breath of incense from the evening service passes by.
Melancholy
Wistfulness
But also warmth that spreads in her heart.
Memories,
many,
wonderful memories...
surround her like a scarf
Purple

01/29/2021

10
Bottle 6
Sillage 6
Longevity 9
Scent

Marieposa
33 Reviews

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Marieposa

Top Review 27

Out of the darkness into the light

In the deepest, darkest winter, when the days are still grey and harsh and the ground is frozen, some years there is that very special moment when you can suddenly smell spring. Biting cold, snow and frost can no longer hide the fact that the days are getting longer again and the greenery is becoming richer. And if you look for the first green shoots among the snow, you won't be disappointed: the first leaf tips of snowdrops, elf crocuses and grape hyacinths have already bravely fought their way out of the frosty depths and into the light.
The sight of these delicate little plants braving the season, the elements, and even the darkness, gives me weak knees every time. This optimism, which only a plant knows, whose nature it is to grow towards the sun, is as touching as it is harrowing - and this is precisely the feeling that Serge Lutens' wonderful De Profundis triggers in me.

"Memento mori" I read here, "graveyard scent" and "candied melancholy" - and that's exactly how Serge Lutens wants the perfume to be understood. But my nose, the headstrong one, smells something else. And the heart, the stubborn, feels anyway, what it wants.

Cool and green. That's the first impression of what I sprayed on my wrist. Plant juice. Elixir of life. The scent conjures up images of woods full of dewy bluebells and purple hyacinths. Young, lush greenery in all its glorious bitterness.
Is Vent Vert being paid a reference here? Yes and no. Perhaps rather L'Air du Temps, for as the fragrance continues to unfold, garden carnations and violets join the floral roundup. Red-gold morning sun warms the ground, and as the sun rises higher, the scent becomes more confident.
Embedded is the essential green floral magic in a spicy-woody oriental base structure with incense and Iso E Super. This may sound like a bit much of a good thing, but works quite excellently and gives the fragrance complexity without painting over the abstract, shimmering delicacy.

Now it so happens that "De Profundis" is not only the name of this fragrance and a psalm, but also the title of an open letter written by the brilliant Oscar Wilde at the nadir of his life, while imprisoned for fornication between 1895 and 1897. The text is a bitter self-accusation, but leads into an almost defiant attempt to pull himself out of that dark hole by his own hair. From the depths and darkness into the light. With an unshakable faith in oneself and the world. Almost like a small, helpless bulbous plant in January.
For this reason, I would like to end this commentary on a fragrance that radiates so much hope for me with a quote from Oscar Wilde from kinder times: "Everything is going to be fine in the end. And if it's not fine it's not the end."

05/24/2019

8
Bottle 7
Sillage 8
Longevity 8
Scent

Taurus
309 Reviews

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Taurus

Top Review 17

Deep Flowers

Those who know me will think that I would more than like the colour of De profundis. This is exactly the violet tone that draws me deep into its spell.

Interest in getting to know each other was expressed thanks to my wish list and luckily also reciprocated. Only the ingredients alone would probably have interested me less, because fragrances with such an emphasis on floral notes are less my baggage scheme.

Both chrysanthemums and violets are elegant and not as massive as feared. De profundis is clearly a floral scent, but green tones and the welcome idea to have the candied fruit quoted, which goes in the direction of candied lemon peel & orange peel, are more than welcome. The latter makes the eau de parfum very smooth, sweet and somewhat relaxed, light-footed with a quite positive tuning vibe.

Incense is only present because one believes that it should be present. Perhaps very deep in the background at the threshold of perceptibility on the other side.
In total, however, it remains rather a rich, gentle fragrance, with which most women would feel more comfortable than men. Probably something more perceptible incense would have made the whole thing a little more mystical and thus more interesting, but I can confirm that among the numerous floral perfumes it is one of the most mysteriously profound, but by no means the most melancholic.

02/07/2024

7
Sillage 8
Longevity 9
Scent

ElAttarine
30 Reviews

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ElAttarine

Top Review 21

Crying in beauty

"With a satirical nod to Death", it says on the Lutens homepage. I don't believe a word they say. Satirical, my ass. (It's probably important for marketing, who would buy a death fragrance?) It's not satirical here, it's serious. But it's not a death fragrance, it's a very melancholy one and, for me, infinitely comforting and hopeful.

Psalm 130, Oscar Wilde, Trakl, Baudelaire ... Previous reviews have already named so many helpful references... What else can be written about this fragrance that makes sense?
Death is great.
We are his
with a laughing mouth.
When we feel
in the midst of life,
he dares to weep
in the midst of us.
(Rilke)

This weeping is built into the beauty of the fragrance. Chrysanthemums, their flowers and their green leaves are robust and stable, but their fragrance is cool, fragile, heartbreakingly beautiful and transparent. In the midst of life, in the midst of laughter, in the midst of beauty, fragility and finiteness make themselves known. It makes you cry. We usually suppress the prospect of everything ending in everyday life, otherwise it would be unbearable. But the certainty transcends time and culture: "In the midst of life we are embraced by death" is the text of a Gregorian chant, "Flames to dust, lovers to friends, all good things come to an end" sings Nelly Furtado. And there are moments when we even long for death, when everything becomes unbearable, when everything threatens to tear us apart. Or everything is simply enough.
Life is terrible. And wonderful! In the end, nothing physical will be left of me, everything will crumble to dust. How will I ever get out of the depths (de profundis) of dejection? I'm pretty sure that the only thing that remains is the love that we have brought and continue to bring into the world. And in all our helplessness, that is - perhaps - the only consolation.
Sweet as delicate, vulnerable spring flowers.
------
The fragrance is quite calm, at least it does not develop dramatically. It smells intensely of chrysanthemums, cool floral, but not or almost not sweet. To me, it smells exactly like the tea that is drunk a lot in China and Vietnam. There is also a kind of translucent dark green, and I associate it with violets - which are also very persistent plants on the one hand, but whose flowers are also so fragile. Together, this results in a kind of abstract, transparent floweriness. Bright incense joins in and fills the space between the petals. I see translucent flowers in front of me, surrounded by the delicate and protective smoke rising from below. There also seems to be a little soft patchouli, at least that's my impression. All very persistent and delicate and fragile at the same time.

Light melancholic - is there such a thing? Linguistically, it would be a contradiction. But here it is not! And so comforting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koFTQvGmNfU

Thanks to @Marieposa !

12/22/2012

6
Scent

MemoryOScent
37 Reviews

MemoryOScent

Top Review 11

mysterious skin

I finally got my hands on a decant of De Profundis. I was looking forward to it because it wasn’t received with the usual enthusiasm and this sort of reaction always attracts me. I cannot say that I have deciphered it yet. I am writing these lines in an attempt to put what I smell in an order, hoping to unlock the daemon that lives inside the purple liquid.

My decant came in a spray bottle and I sprayed eagerly to get a first whiff. Big mistake. Serge Lutens does not give this option for De profundis and I discovered there is a good reason for this. Actually I consider De Profundis an extreme in terns of how differently it manifests itself when sprayed and when dabbed. My first impression from a spray wearing was that of an astringent, cold incense tear fragrance that vaguely reminded me of Messe de Minuit. It took a lot of effort to separate the chrysanthemum note in the opening and when I did it was rather brief. Remembering previous experiences with Serge Lutens fragrances I dabbed a small amount to discover a completely different construction.

The opening is characterized by an acerbic floral note that has the sweaty, animalic characteristics of chrysanthemum but also has a sweetness and lift that reminds me of tagette. In fact I get a stronger resemblance to chrysanthemum from Kokorico than from this one. The floral note here is softer, rounder, sweeter and has a candied aspect that reminds me of a very familiar accord from many Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier releases. I think violet plays a big part in this candied illusion. There is a green hue in these flowers, just enough to keep them fresh and non-sensual. As the floral opening relaxes it becomes obvious that this will not be a big fragrance. It is very subdued, close to the skin and rather shy. Within a few minutes a rather soapy, cool, unburned incense enters the scene and composes most of the heart of the perfume. The incense in my opinion remains in the background, giving the flowers a more cerebral quality. It doesn’t try to steer the composition towards a different direction. In the deep drydown I catch whiffs of something warm and rather unexpected. To my nose it smells somewhere half way between coffee and baked clay. It has a spicy quality and reminds me the cloves in Iris Silver Mist. Barely there but still doing their work. I can only suppose that this is the reported soil tincture note but since this note is outside my recognition repertoire my guess is as good as yours. There is something ashen in this phase of the development.

De Profundis, unlike its dark promotional prose, is not a dark fragrance. It is another member of the ethereal floral family of Serge Lutens creations, right next to Un Lys, Bas de Soie and Vitriol d’Oeillet. It is not a revolutionary fragrance either. What I find most interesting is the way it juggles with some very feminine notes without dropping them, without allowing them to go full speed feminine. It is a very cold and detached fragrance and it made me think that if it had been bottled in the oblong, square bottles of L’Eau Froide I probably would be writing a dithyrambic review but the truth is that I was expecting something with more depth from De Profundis. Of course when it comes to a Serge Lutens I don’t get I always leave a window open for an epiphany. After all it has taken me about 5ml to reach to this very reserved review. The reason for this is because what I smell is something very pleasing but little engaging. I cannot help but think that this is exactly the purpose it is supposed to serve. It feels somewhat ceremonial and although death is not what comes to mind, I keep getting a mental image of a wax statue. Could it be a wax death mask? I have always thought of wax death masks as the last kiss to life. The reverse effect of dipping my face in a bowl of cold water. Dissipation instead of invigoration. And most death masks boast a mysterious Gioconda smile, like the model had finally found the solution to a puzzle.

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