Le Participe Passé

Serge Lutens is my favourite fragrance house, and when it comes to things I love, I’m fanatical. Admitting defeat doesn’t come easy to me. When I unpacked my decant of Le Participe Passé, I was on the verge of calling this a mistake on not just my part for getting so much as a decant, but also, uncharacteristically, on the house’s part for creating something so sloppy in vision and execution. If ever more proof that bottle sniffs are meaningless were needed, this would be the perfect evidence: all around the bottle hung a heavy scent of caramel popcorn, sickeningly sweet to the point just the thought of this on me was dreadful. But being the brave perfume enthusiast that I am, I sacrificed my wrist... turns out, to a unique, intoxicating, addictive experience. The first blast was an aromatic men’s cologne, but within an instant two things happened: the alcohol scent that is the hallmark of such cologne disappeared into thin air, and the sweet base came in full force. Just like that, Le Participe Passé became two separate perfumes simultaneously. On top sits the slightly bitter aromatic blend. I love the descriptor “fresh spicy” for it, because there’s a bite to its freshness, which clears your airways and snakes itself down to the back of your throat. This is a pleasant experience, although unmistakably masculine. Below something slightly, subjectively off-putting is happening. I do not like the scents that are appearing and mixing. These are the things I do not enjoy: maple syrup pooling on the plate, grounds burning inside as the machine squirts watery coffee into a cup. It’s the breakfast from hell. But no, there’s something synthetic missing from this mixture, something I know I smelled in my childhood but cannot pinpoint. So begins my chase after the elusive key to deciphering what it is that I’m smelling. I glimpse scenes from my childhood, the terrible pine shaped car scent, that feels close but the answer flees once again. Was it when I was playing with dolls with a friend? I remember the layout of her Mum’s living room, there must have been something there. But what? I have no idea. It smells waxy. Two distinct fragrances keep unfolding separately. Now the maple is moving towards the top, it’s becoming a forest. Below, dates are being cut open. They’re sticky inside, waxy. Wax. That ought to be the synthetic note I feel. I’m dizzy. The wax is disgusting, but not only that, I’m trapped inside a Proust nightmare: my brain is flipping through images, scenes, possible answers. What is it that I’m really smelling? The answer is all the farther away than the reach of my grasp, now that there are spices unfolding. This hunt and the fact that I sprayed just one perfume, yet there are, without a doubt, two different perfumes developing are disorientating. The world spins fast, I see images of a spice bazaar, I remember Arabie, my favourite perfume ever, just a blast of a spice market; Arabie... Wait, no, the more I dwell on this remembrance, the faster I’m losing my obsessive track. I cannot be swept away, and yet, and yet... I see two visions: the dank, dark, misty forest on top; below I’m a wanderer in the desert. I reach for the dates, put several in my mouth, I bite on them... and they’re half-molten wax, not dates, but a candle, filling my mouth with a chemical taste. I feel sick. And then I land on the answer, so suddenly, so abruptly that I feel suspended in the air. I know where I know this smell from. It’s a fall candle in Bath and Body Works. I’m little, a child who’s excited for the freshly opened store. I love candles, I have my pocket money, and a goal: I will smell everything, and find the perfect candle to take home, to make mine. I reach for the fall candle, and it smells nothing like it’s supposed to, it’s all synthetic, it’s all sickening... The moment the realisation hits as if a thunder, more revelations: I know what is happening with Le Participe Passé, and why. First of all, yes, it’s magic. How is it possible to achieve two separate perfumes developing separately within the same bottle? This is master perfumery. This is unmatched. And this is so apt: two different timelines, eventually converging, melting into each other, forming a whole... The forest is Lille: Lutens’ home of origin. The desert is Marrakech: the home he chose. This is Serge’s past meeting his present, bottled. Gradually, the forest turns into pencil shavings, falling on top of the dates, off which the wax melts, taking its unpleasant memory with it. Now the two perfumes have converged, and they’re one. It’s the present, shaped by the past. The past, intruding upon the present: dates enveloped by burning woods. There’s a fire in the woods. There’s a fire in the desert. Smoke fills the cold, humid night. The dates are sweet, so fleshy and so sweet. You should be choking, for the smoke fills your nostrils, the sugar your mouth. There’s a sharpness in your throat; a perfect roundness in your mouth. You’re holding the memories of what has been, and all the dualities of life. Of identity. Of yourself. Of fact and fiction. An ever-changing fragrance for an ever-changing reality. A perfume in flux for the person in flux. Spice, smoke, camphor, sugar, cacao, dusty castoreum in constant rotation, endless transmutation. You cannot pinpoint the scent, you cannot pinpoint yourself. Who are you? What is it? Quantum beings in the amalgamation of space and time. Le Participe Passé is poetry written in redolence. The sort of masterpiece that weakens you, that breaks something and liberates another within your core; the sort of art before which you cannot help but fall to your knees...

As anyone who has read many of my reviews and can recall them, immemorable they might be, they will know that I'm worn out on ambers. We've been on this ride for the better part of a century from Emeraude and Shalimar to where we are today, with countless numbers on our retail perfume shelves and too many that are awful, thick, bulbous, sweet, muddy messes of splintery balsams and sickly vanilla. Serge Lutens and Sheldrake almost reinvented the wheel with Ambre Sultan, one of my favorite ambers of all time, and it seems with Le Participe Passe they're making another attempt. So, I steel myself in anticipation of smelling yet another amber, but it's from Lutens so I don't feel the need to steel myself too much. Although, I suspect a ruse. It wouldn’t be the first time Serge tries to trick us, and I think he hints at it in the name, The Past Participle. This smells to me like a mash-up of the past, Ambre Sultan with some serious borrowing from Chene and Fille en Aiguilles (and maybe some of Chergui too). Place those three/four on a Venn diagram and where they meet in the middle is Le Participe Passe. There is more than enough Ambre Sultan in Participe to see the overlap of the spices, patchouli, vanilla, resins and balsams. Where LPP deviates from AS in the amber genre is that LPP has a massive overdose of sweet labdanum (sort of calling to mind Chergui) that wasn't nearly as big and sweet in AS. This has the effect of steering away from the very dry, herbal and sandy quality of Ambre Sultan into a gourmand direction. The immortelle and boozy rum type notes from Chene compliment the directional change, and the dried and sweet fruit and resinous evergreen sap from Fille nearly complete the picture of LPP. One final and last difference to LPP compared to the others is its size and volume: this is a big, loud, and bold perfume. It will completely take over your skin, fill the room around you, and hang around for hours and hours. Be careful applying this perfume; less is more at the start until you figure out how it works for you. Big, bold, and loud though it is, on my skin - though maybe not yours - it isn't crowding me; it isn't cloying or impenetrably thick. I dare say I could actually wear this loud and bold gourmand amber in the summer (if I do, I will take my own advice and start with very small amounts). So, is LPP a bit derivative then? Yeah, maybe. It seems like maybe a half-hearted attempt at a new type of gourmand amber. But where it succeeds is pulling some of the greatest hits from Serge Lutens's woody spicy amber perfumes over the decades, and, rather than being a compilation album of stand-alone tracks, it's actually well thought-out, remixed, and remastered so that the greatest hits album feels like it could be a completely new album full of hit tracks. Gourmand is not my thing. Amber is not my thing. Sweet is not my thing. And yet, I'm really loving LPP. Do I want to splurge on a full bottle or just layer some of the other SLs?... Haven't made up my mind on that yet.

I love it! Love the name and the juice. I have pretty much all the "older" Lutens, and this conjures up many favorites: Fille en Aiguilles; Arabie (though more subdued on that one); Chene; Baptême du Feu (definitely that one, with a weaker pot pourri); Chypre Rouge; Feminite du Bois, and whispers of even Borneo with a brief moment of chocolatey patch. If you're a fan of his original oeuvre, then this is sure to please, because while it conjures up the past in the present--it is balanced, full, rich and lovely, and unique--still. Someone below commented on its "derivative" nature. Perhaps, but to me it is the sum of the parts of Lutens, the best parts. In fact, if there was one Lutens to keep in this particular vein--it might well be this. LPP is rich, resinous, sweet (though not tooth-achingly in the way Bapteme or Arabie can be), a bit dried fruit and petals, "winey" and autumnal with a dark heart center. The artemisia balances what could be too sweet and foody with an herbal anchor, morphing the dried compote aspects. Thankfully, I don't get caramel--as in straight-up caramel. The sweetness does not feel that trite, or "Prada-ish." Longevity and silage on me are through the roof. My skin doesn't seem to retain a lot of scents, but I typically do well with Lutens--and this one in particular. It goes on strong and lasts for hours, leaving quite a trail. As an English teacher, I thoroughly enjoy his apt name for the juice. It is now, acting now, and has happened/ acted in the past. It's the base, the original that is in the present, with the past--to happen/will happen, has happened, and it can be an adjective as well or even a noun as with what we call "verbals." Le Participe Passe' does all that, without being "out of date" (passe').

This is a complicated one, but in a way, it's exactly what I was looking for without even knowing it. I picked it up as I was craving something that would replicate the magic of smelling SL Chergui for the first time. Upon trying this, I think I might give layering the two a go. This is a good, strong, full-bodied fragrance. I can see some people thinking it might smell a little 'musty,' maybe due to the cumin, but it doesn't turn me off. Upon wearing this fragrance on my wrist for about 7 hours and experiencing nearly its full journey, I'll describe what memories it brings to mind for me: this smells like my birthday parties from my childhood. Two of my cousins also have early February birthdays, so the family would have a joint party for the three of us at my aunt's log cabin in the woods, where we could toboggan down the hills while the adults caught up with each other, and then come in for dinner and cake. This smells like coming in from the cold to the crackling fireplace and the homemade cake baking in the oven. It smells like my grandfather's hugs after he came in from smoking vanilla cigarillos. It smells like the patchouli oil my aunts (twins) wore on both of their wrists, whispering past my nose as a slice of cake is placed in front of me. It's warm and sweet and inviting, and gives the feeling of being cozy in a place where time doesn't exist. While these scent memories are obviously personal to myself, I recommend Le Participe Passe to anyone looking for a cozy, comforting scent that pulls a little off the beaten path.

Salty Black Balsam I absolutely hated this the first time I tried it. Now, I truly love it! The opening has an aromatic feel you have to pass: a pine forest under darkness, green blueish needles, trees swaying calmly, night. This almost oldschool fougére-leaning moment is nice enough, but actually my least favorite part. All of the pine notes fade in about one hour or less and then, the heart of Le Participé Passé is fully in focus: Black oozing, gooey, salty licorice balsam! I think LPP is first and foremost a salty fragrance. Dark, sticky and molasses-like in smell and percieved texture. With an overdose of molecules found in maple syrup, fenugreek and brown sugar, it's quite extreme. The "caramel" note is not sweet at all, not really burnt either, but as dark as it can get before turning bitter. Regardless of the treats one tends to think of, Participé never sweetens. It stays a dark, balsamic "amber" of warm molasses, jujubees, and dates, licorice root (no anise). The lack of sweetness makes Le Participe Passé a rather unconventional and difficult to place within either the amber or gourmand category. I'm happy I got a bottle of this since it's now discontinued. It will last quite a while because 1-2 sprays is usually more than enough and it stays on for a long time. I love it on sunwarmed skin, especially on summer evenings in golden light.