There’s no doubt that the world is a more beautiful place for Serge Lutens‘s influence. Though he began styling hair as a fourteen-year-old apprentice in Lille, France, Mr. Lutens’s talents quickly transcended the world of hair styling. Over the course of his career, he has made his mark as a makeup artist, photographer, art director and legendary perfumer, working with brands like Dior, Shiseido, and Vogue, before launching his eponymous line of products in 2000.
Below, Barneys New York sits down with the genre-defying artist to discuss inspiration, intuition, and imaginary projections.
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Barneys New York: Like many accomplished artists and entrepreneurs, you began your career at an early age, apprenticing at a salon in Lille. What drew you to the realm of beauty?
Serge Lutens: The realm of ugliness! A very different standpoint.
BNY: You worked for Vogue during an incredibly exciting period in fashion history: the 1960s. What was it like to collaborate with greats like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn?
SL: It all feels like a very long time ago. There’s a huge gulf between the myth that held true then and the myth that has taken hold now. Both Penn and Avedon were huge talents.
BNY: Any memorable encounters with then-Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland?
SL: Diana Vreeland could be both fascinating and terrifying if you didn’t know her. All in all, she was the one with “the power.” She ran the headline, “Serge Lutens: Revolution of Make-Up,” and it’s true that this article, in which I’d made up Ingrid Boulting to look like a bird of paradise (photographed by Avedon), started an unstoppable movement. It was not just makeup, it was a way of being. The shackles of makeup were broken. A new image was born.
BNY: Your photographs have inspired a cult following, and have even been showcased in the Guggenheim Museum. Who are your photography muses?
SL: As far as I’m concerned, everything was always about the imaginary projection of a potential other. These girls were usually complete strangers, and I just happened to come across them at an agency or a casting… French, American, Greek—the language didn’t matter. I express myself by gestures, intuition. That’s the way everything happens. Music creates the connection.
BNY: You now live in Marrakech. What are the most evocative scents in that city?
SL: They are just as present as the people walking by, the colours, the things within us. Cedar wood is very important. I’ve used it widely and people have widely “understood” it. There is also amber, virtually the same as the one used in Ambre Sultan.
BNY: As a makeup artist, you’ve worked with some of the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century’s greatest beauties. What’s the one item of makeup that no woman should be without?
SL: Her hands, her eyes.
- Interview by Lesley M. M. Blume
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