Lonicéra

There are creatures that know the secret of the depths.

The great marine mammals, the whales, plunge vertically into the abyss of the oceans, where daylight no longer penetrates. They descend far, very far, into that dark and silent world that few dare to explore. Then they rise back up.

But what they rise toward is not simply the surface. It is a clarity of another nature, that of the soul, the spirit, the inner elevation.

Eaux Sombres is the perfume of this perpetual movement, between the depths and the light, between the visible world and the invisible, between what we know and what we sense. This endless quest for transcendence and elevation of the self.

We all have a path of life. Each road leads us to another, sometimes toward the light, sometimes toward the darkness. It is these choices, these symbols and messages written like signs along our road, that make us who we are.

Learning to make our emotions intelligent. The power of positive thinking. Living between the visible and the invisible and perceiving what others cannot see.

Extrait de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

Paris, the 1960s.

A woman crosses the Boulevard Saint-Germain. A well-cut coat, precise heels, gaze straight ahead. She is one of those Parisian women who need no effort — elegance is second nature to them, never a performance.

She is Séverine.

The heroine of Belle de Jour, Luis Buñuel's film with Catherine Deneuve. On the surface, a perfect, irreproachable wife, with an enigmatic smile. In reality, a woman who lives entirely by her own rules, discreetly, absolutely.

Plaisir d'Amour draws its inspiration from this era and this woman. That particular Parisian chic, neither too classic, nor too restrained, that always conceals something beneath its obvious perfection. An elegance that needs no justification.

Plaisir d'Amour is a couture fragrance, cut with precision, worn with grace, like a signed dress one recognises without seeing the label.

Eau de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

Brussels. A December weekend.

It is bitterly cold. Louison is pushed through the door of Saint Catherine's Church by a gust of wind that leaves him no choice. An exhibition of orthodox icons from around the world has been installed there for a few days.

He is not of the Christian faith. But he has always been fascinated by liturgical art and symbolism — by those subtle and profound links that unite Christian symbolism with the Kabbalah of Judaism. Invisible bridges between beliefs, that few people take the time to contemplate.

Inside, time stands still. Visitors are in rapture before the beauty of the icons, illuminated by candlelight — blue, red, green, gold. Louison begins to smell. The dusty scent of stone walls. The dry cold of the blue stone floor. The freshly polished wood of the pews. He takes out his small notebook and notes everything down.

A priest approaches. He watches, intrigued. "Why are you smelling everything?" Louison looks up: "Oh, don't worry... I create perfumes." The priest looks at him as though he were a heretic escaped from an asylum.

But Louison's mind is elsewhere. He looks at the icons, these women holding children in their arms. And he thinks: every woman holding her child in her arms is a saint. Like our mothers who held us. These silent, absolute saints of everyday life.

Scented Candle — Weight: 220g / 7.76oz — 100% soy wax — Burn time: 55 to 60 hours — Made in France in our atelier.

Young, Louison was called the man of the forest.

He has always loved losing himself for hours in the woods, that particular sensation of being watched, without knowing by whom, or by what. What do they think of us, from up there? And the trees — what do they think of us?

Trees can live for more than a hundred years. They surely know the deepest secrets of the forest. They are its eyes, its memory, its silent guardians. They can feel pain, experience emotions, like fear.

They like to stay close to one another, to embrace. They appreciate company and take their time. There is a deep friendship between them, they can live like an old couple, where each one takes care of the other.

Trees have emotions.

Extrait de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

There are states that reason cannot explain.

The mystics know this, those who, across the ages and across religions, have lived that particular moment when the body no longer belongs entirely to the earth. The stigmata that appear. The visions that impose themselves. The trance that invades, surpasses, transcends. A connection with the invisible so powerful that it leaves traces upon the flesh.

Thérèse d'Avila, Francis of Assisi, Maimonides, Isaac Luria, the Baal Shem Tov. The Sufis in prayer. The Tibetan monks in deep meditation. The shamans in trance.

Whatever the tradition, whatever name is given to this force, the experience itself is strikingly similar. A total surrender. An elevation. A pleasure that is not of this world.

The scent of holiness floating in the air. Touched by grace. Divine pleasure. Ecstatic orgasm.

For this is precisely what it is, that fine line between spiritual ecstasy and the ecstasy of the body. The mystics themselves did not always distinguish between the two. And perhaps there is no difference at all.

Eau de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

Close your eyes.

Imagine the hills of Haute-Provence in the height of summer. As far as the eye can see, fields of deep and luminous violet lavender in full bloom, swaying gently in the warm breeze. A sight that takes the breath away.

And in that silence, for it is indeed silence, that particular silence of lavender fields, dense and soothing, the humming of bees. Hundreds of bees, butterflies, pollinators of all kinds going about their work with joyful concentration. Nature in full activity, in all its beauty.

It is before this spectacle that Louison feels that state of grace, the kind that only nature knows how to provoke. The colour, the fragrance, the living silence, the bees. Everything merges into a single perfect moment.

Eau de Cologne — 250 ml / 8.45 oz

A late summer night. An unlit French country road. Louison is alone at the wheel of his vintage black Saab 900, eyes fixed on the tarmac, alert — a deer, a wild boar, a fox could leap from the darkness at any moment.

On the radio, a podcast. The BBC pays tribute to Barbara Cartland, that eccentric of the English aristocracy who dressed exclusively in pink, whose homes were decorated in every shade from rose to lilac, mauve to violet, with occasional touches of unabashed kitsch. A woman who wrote romantic novels, who had built an entire empire from her stories, who adored violet perfumes, and who carried it all off with sovereign nonchalance.

Then the journalist asks a question. An uncomfortable one. Almost indiscreet.

"Do you have any fantasies? If so, what are they?"

A long silence settles. Louison thinks she must be offended. But no.

Her answer comes, in a voice unexpectedly sensual, like that of a woman whose desires are only just awakening, yet who is already of a very considerable age.

"I like young boys... and leather."

A burst of laughter in the dark. The forest rushing past on either side. Focus on the road.

Eau de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

A manor house, lost in the middle of nowhere.

Louison spends a few days there with friends. The garden overflows with flowers, the vegetation growing freely, at its own pace. The house seems outside of time, welcoming, filled with a magnificent energy. One senses that it is happy to receive visitors.

At night, the woodwork creaks softly. Louison is not frightened. He always leaves a small lamp on in his room.

The walls are covered in wallpaper with immense flowers, flowers one would not find in the garden. Flowers from another world. At night, by the light of the lamp, he can admire their dance in the shadows. They have sensed his presence.

One of them draws closer. Its shadow brushes his ear. It whispers:

"We are on the wall. We have a fragrance. Lighter than nature. In the countries of the future or the ancient lands. Here is our ornament. And we repeat it from floor to ceiling. A fear of being misunderstood, for we have neither freshness nor seasons, nor sky, nor bees, nor breezes."

He falls asleep. And all of them came to him. They wrapped around him to protect him from the spirits of the night.

Extrait de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

I have always loved the scent of hyacinth. Its intense floral aroma has always captivated me, the deep green of its foliage, the galbanum, the spicy balsamic, honeyed, sometimes powdery.

I took the time to formulate this perfume. A long time. Because I wanted a formula as close to nature as possible. I no longer know how many attempts, reformulations, even when I was close to the goal and could have said to myself: "Okay, we've got it" but I wanted to push it even further, refine it, add facets, reach for perfection.

And then one evening, the idea came. A combination of raw materials from an initial formula and the final formula, to be assembled surgically. When I smelled this last attempt, I immediately understood. It was the one. The final formula.

Scented Candle — Weight: 220g / 7.76oz — 100% soy wax — Burn time: 55 to 60 hours — Made in France in our atelier.

At the very tip of the Italian boot, where the land boldly stretches out toward the Mediterranean, lies Calabria.

A region of light and solar excess. Of steep hills covered in orange, lemon and citron trees. And above all, of bergamot trees, for it is here that this rare and precious fruit finds its exceptional terroir. Known to perfumers the world over, it thrives under the particular intensity of the Calabrian sun.

Imagine the orchards at dawn, the air still cool, heavy with the fragrance of citrus fruits awakening with the sun. That explosion of golden freshness, vivid and luminous, that floods the senses like a promise of beauty.

Scented Candle — Weight: 220g / 7.76oz — 100% soy wax — Burn time: 55 to 60 hours — Made in France in our atelier.

The ship is called l'Incognito. It is coming home.

Its hull is moored at the quay of the port of Antwerp. But the Incognito has come from far away. It has crossed the world, and carries its scents.

From India, it brings patchouli and spices. From the islands of the Indian Ocean, heady ylang-ylang. From the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal, incense, myrrh, Egyptian jasmine. From the Mediterranean Sea, honey from Haifa. From Istanbul, the rose, bewitching and deep. From Spain and Gibraltar, labdanum. From the Atlantic Ocean, the sharp, briny air. From Portugal, tobacco in infusion, falling on the blue stones of the wet quay, piercing the invisible sun prowling beneath the waters.

Antwerp. The damp quayside. The smell of fuel oil mingled with that of the Scheldt. And all these scents of the world settling gently on the cobblestones of the city.

Scented Candle — Weight: 220g / 7.76oz — 100% soy wax — Burn time: 55 to 60 hours — Made in France in our atelier.

Paris will always be Paris.

Louison spent years cycling through its streets, willingly losing himself in its meanders, discovering at every turn a forgotten facade, a secret courtyard, a café unchanged since the last century. Paris has this unique way of revealing itself to those who take the time to look.

But it is another Paris that inspired Paname Paname, the Paris of the 1920s and 30s, flamboyant and liberating. The Paris of Colette, Camille Claudel, Gabrielle Chanel, Arletty, Joséphine Baker, Kiki de Montparnasse, Édith Piaf. Women of fierce character who claimed their femininity with a capital F, their thirst for independence and equality in a world that denied them both.

Imagine one of them walking into a room. Red lips. Face powdered white. Hair cut short. She knows every eye in the room has turned toward her, and acts as though she hasn't noticed.

She needs no one to exist.

Eau de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

There are figures in history who seem to have crossed the centuries without ageing.

Hildegard of Bingen is one of them. Born in the 12th century, visionary, poet, musician and herbalist, she is considered today as the first true naturopath and modern phytotherapist. Her astonishing predictions, her avant-garde medicine, her music and her spirituality have left an indelible mark on history. Nine centuries after her death, her teachings remain strikingly relevant.

How could such an extraordinary and richly gifted figure have taken so long to capture the attention of our contemporaries?

Louison discovers her during his perfumery studies, while simultaneously attending evening classes in herbalism and aromatherapy. He has always felt deeply this connection with nature, with plants, and that ancestral instinct that drives us to believe nature offers the remedies humanity needs to heal itself. In Hildegard, he recognises a kindred spirit, a woman who had understood, nine centuries before him, what few then dared to affirm.

Eau de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

Brussels. A December weekend.

It is bitterly cold. Louison is pushed through the door of Saint Catherine's Church by a gust of wind that leaves him no choice. An exhibition of orthodox icons from around the world has been installed there for a few days.

He is not of the Christian faith. But he has always been fascinated by liturgical art and symbolism — by those subtle and profound links that unite Christian symbolism with the Kabbalah of Judaism. Invisible bridges between beliefs, that few people take the time to contemplate.

Inside, time stands still. Visitors are in rapture before the beauty of the icons, illuminated by candlelight — blue, red, green, gold. Louison begins to smell. The dusty scent of stone walls. The dry cold of the blue stone floor. The freshly polished wood of the pews. He takes out his small notebook — the one that goes everywhere with him — and notes everything down.

A priest approaches. He watches, intrigued. "Why are you smelling everything?" Louison looks up: "Oh, don't worry... I create perfumes." The priest looks at him as though he were a heretic escaped from an asylum.

But Louison's mind is elsewhere. He looks at the icons, these women holding children in their arms. And he thinks: every woman holding her child in her arms is a saint. Like our mothers who held us. These silent, absolute saints of everyday life.

Eau de Parfum — 50 ml / 1.69 oz

To give a perfume is to give an emotion. But choosing for someone else is often the most difficult thing of all.

The Technique Indiscrète Gift Box was born from this conviction: the most beautiful gift is the one that leaves the other person free to be themselves.

It contains the complete collection in a 5ml discovery format, Eau de Parfum and Extraits d'Émotion, so that the person you love can take the time to explore, to smell, to choose. At their own pace. According to their own emotions.

A personal code is included in the gift box. Once the fragrance has been chosen, simply send it to us, the 50ml bottle is dispatched within 48 hours. The code is valid for two months.

Presented in a black étui, understated and elegant, in keeping with the spirit of the house.

Retail price: €120