La vierge de fer Serge Lutens 2013

In the last times i have had the chance to visit several times the beautiful showroom of Serge Lutens at Les Jardins du Palais Royal, and experience some of the exclusive fragances, including this very last release, La Vierge de Fer, probably some of you are curious about it, so here are my impressions.

As every time a new fragance from the House of Lutens is released, it comes with an exquitely designed mythology that usually triggers my desire to smell it as very few brands manage. In this case, the concept is so appealing. The religion of Iron needed a Virgin, and the Virgin, a lily. What a delightfl transition from the torture device at the service of fanatism, to the a flower of purity. A maiden of iron, with its hollow inside covered in nails and razors to purify the sins of the body and make the soul worthy of our Lady´s lily... it gives you chills, but this poetic imaginery indeed describes pretty much what the scent is.

A lily that smells of metal. Or, well, a bit metallic.

But in order to really understand La Vierge de Fer, here´s a warning. This is not a dark, gothic fragance. Take a lily and take a metal note. Fuse them masterfully so the lily morphs into iron (or blood) in one single deep sinff. There you have it. No torture chambers. No coldness from the metal. No mistery even. Not a shadow, but a beautiful, heady lily, at the very light of the day.

Now, lilies can be a torture device for some people! They sure are heady. I find myself having this sadomasochist feeling when i happen to have fresh lilies at home... i love them but they can be too much, and even if im grasping for air, i wont dare to open a window... La Vierge du Fer is not as suffocating, but is way headier than Un Lys from the same line. Un Lys is greener; a natural smelling lily. La Vierge is more complex. The addition of jasmine imparts a more sensual and femenine quality (almost sexy, not really virginal) than Un Lys (i would wear Un Lys) and the tinkling iron note makes it more aggresive and high pitched than the former, which is probably what i like best of this perfume. But, overall, aggressive is not really a word that goes with La Vierge de Fer, lets say more assertive... it is a pleasant, grown-up, lily soliflore that wont give you maedieval nightmares , nor fulfill your heavy metal fantasies.

The quality is outstanding as you would expect of the price. Great performance and longevity. I loved that the metallic notes didn´t fade although i long they managed to transform the lily up to the point it smells really cold and detached instead of seductive and ladylike. But really worth a sniff! We need more lilies!

In their roles as artistic director and perfumer, Lutens and Sheldrake have explored their central woody accord many times, taking it in a syrupy-spiced direction with Arabie, Miel de Bois and Daim Blond and in a more overtly gourmand direction with Un Bois Vanille and Five O’Clock au Gingembre. Overall, there’s been a tendency to hold close their to their signature wood/fruit compositional style but with their soli-floral perfumes Sheldrake and Lutens range much further afield. The perfumes run from pretty and tame (Sa Majesté la Rose & Un Lys) to ferocious (Tubereuse Criminelle & Iris Silver Mist*). La Vierge de Fer falls in line with two other perfumes the brand, A La Nuit (2000) and Datura Noir (2001). Let’s call them the Crass Florals.

All three of the Crass Florals share an over-the-topness that defuses any solemnity the Lutens line might have accrued over the years. Lutens himself has seen enough fashion over the years that he seems to know to pepper ‘serious’ design with camp. La Vierge de Fer’s depiction of lily is less olfacto-realistic than A La Nuit’s jasmine but only slightly so. The unexpected lily-pear pairing takes a moment to come into focus clearly but once it does, it makes perfect sense. The two aromas, the flower and the fruit, share a musky connection that might not be obvious but is smartly manipulated by Sheldrake, who makes the unexpected pairing fit together perfectly. The prickly mouth feel of a bite of pear is recreated with a shellac-like musky tone that cuts sweetness and allows flavor to shine through just as it does in a pear on the cusp of ripeness. La Vierge de Fer’s lily is green and expansive, quite different than the wafting vanillic lily Sheldrake composed for Lutens Un Lys. The pairing of flower and fruit is angular but not jarring and has less sting than the lost pear–florals Jean-Michel Duriez created for Jean Patou.

La Vierge de Fer lacks Datura Noir syrup but shares the luminosity and billowing projection suggestive of tropical climes. Also like Datura Noir, La Vierge maintains super-sized proportions into the hearnotes but finds a more tenable scale by dry-down. The lily remains coherent throughout and the perfume neither loses its shape nor collapses into a ‘skin scent’ and demonstrates Sheldrake’s particular talent for coherent, satisfying drydowns.

La Vierge de Fer provided a welcome break in the grey drift of Lutens’s recent Oedipal florals. 2013’s La Vierge de Fer was preceded by the receding-carnation of 2011’s Vitriol d’Oeillet and followed by the bleak white-out of 2014’s l’Orpheline and grey skies of 2015’s La Religieuse. The muffled, blanketing tones of these woody florals seem at odds with the specificity of many of the line’s earlier florals. They were framed by cryptic allusions by Lutens to revisited childhood memories and distant female authority figures. I believe they were intended to convey a sort of meditative sense of distance and isolation but as a collection they don’t build on each other to express anything but an uncomfortable listlessness.

Vierge de Fer started in the Palais Royal Exclusive line (the bell jars) and eventually found its way to the export line (the rectangular spray bottles.) I came to The Iron Maiden out of sequence, well after The Caustic Carnation, The Orphan and The Nun. The name and the general trend in the Lutens line led me to expect a dirge of a perfume but La Vierge de Fer is neither torturous, as the name implies, nor grim like the other latter-day Lutens florals.

* Yeah, iris is a root but is described qualitatively as a floral scent.

from scenthurdle.com

Forget about any Jeanne d’Arc connection. This is a torture device. It lures you in and then the blades appear. It’s a Jacobean revenge drama in a perfume bottle.

You start with a drop of citrus and then you are pounced by shrill white florals and very bright sirupy juice, like a vengeful ghost in a wedding dress. The nuptial bouquet of pungent lilies and jasmine nearly tickles your frontal lobe with its scent and you can just about sense a starting headache, but wait! Just then it’s like the temperature in the air suddenly drops and the same chilly frozen air effect you get from L’Eau Froide (I set it aside, as a cute citrus cleaner scented mistake in a miniature bottle, after I tried it first in August. But in December it’s bottled cold air. A complete magic trick!) will pierce through the white lilies and honeyed pears (Quinces perhaps?) and it’s when you understand the meaning of the words “Iron Maiden”, the Vierge de Fer.

The sudden coldness sets the stage for the ominous metallic notes, beginning to mingle with the aromas of pears and the flowers. And then there is blood. It’s not even the smell of blood, but rather the taste of bleeding gums, but recreated in a perfume. Sheldrake is a sick genius, there’s no other way to put this. This whole act is over before you wrap your head around what you just witnessed and the whole piece ends in another self reference, as the sweet white lilies settle into the gentle and calm musks of Clair de Lune.

All the theatrics aside, this really is a beautiful floral and the weirdness is easily missed if one isn’t paying very close attention. This is one aspect I love about Lutens perfumes; while there’s always something strange, it’s never just about the strangeness. Vierge de Fer is a fantastic, elegant white floral perfume, able to fill a room carelessly and the people complimenting you would be none the wiser about the drama written in slowly disintegrating molecules on your skin.

Bravo.

Before metallic, steel-cold accords became more common, there was La vierge de fer. It was one of my first encounters with a metallic perfume, and at the time it felt daring, out of place, and almost forbidden. The provocation was not only in the scent itself but also in the wordplay and concept behind the name. Serge Lutens said the fragrance was inspired by Joan of Arc: the pure maiden clad in silver armor, holding lilies, a symbol of purity. Yet La Vierge de Fer literally means “the Iron Maiden,” which also refers to a medieval torture device, a spiked casket designed to bleed its victim to death. That duality is unsettling on paper, and it led many to expect something aggressive or dangerous.

In reality, the fragrance feels far closer to the first interpretation: an innocent maiden in steel armor, holding a bouquet of lilies. It opens with a piercing white floral note, quickly softened by a beautiful, fresh, juicy pear. There is a subtle metallic freshness, as if the pear were chilled and the flowers were submerged in crystal-clear cold water. The effect is cool and luminous rather than violent. The drydown is light, clean, and slightly shampoo-like, a fruity floral with nothing truly scary about it.

It is also important to note that La Vierge de Fer has gone through multiple reformulations and packaging changes over the years and is currently unavailable on the official Serge Lutens website, possibly being reformulated again or discontinued altogether. Early formulations reportedly gave some reviewers unsettling sensations, described as cold steel, dentist-chair metal, or even bleeding gums. Those sharper metallic facets seem to have been smoothed out over time. I own one of the more recent bottles, and in its current form it feels ozonic, fresh, clean, and pretty. It is wearable and restrained, without the extremity or discomfort associated with its reputation.

this, to me, is too overrated and overpriced for a basic shampoo smell that has the longevity of a body mist (on the skin, it performs better on the clothes)

it opens up with a sweet juicy pear with a hint of white florals coming through, but that's about it. It doesn't go anywhere from there. i don't detect any metallic or mineral notes that would make this fragrance more interesting or at least a little bit ominous. the presence of incense is questionable as well.

generally speaking, i had huge hopes for these notes but ended up down the drain with bath water again...

it gets more fun when layered with perles de lalique or hermann a mes cotes from eldo - that's when it gets cold, somber, hauntingly beautiful and more fitting to its name, although it's a bit too expensive to justify buying a whole bottle.