Serge Lutens is one of the first brands I fell in love with when I went down the niche perfume rabbit hole. Their perfumes made me fall in love with perfume. I love their olfactory style, and some of my absolute favorite perfumes in my collection are Serge Lutens: Borneo 1834, Jeux de Peau, Gris Clair…, Five o’clock au gingembre. I’ve also treasured several decants of Serge Lutens scents that different perfume friends have sent me over the years: Baptême du Feu, Fourreau Noir, Encens at Lavande, Fille en Aiguilles, and others. Serge Lutens perfumes have slowly disappeared from US perfume retailers, and rumors abound about how so many of their perfumes have been reformulated to the point of losing their magic.

So, one of my favorite parts of visiting Paris was visiting Serge Lutens shop locations and chatting with the shopkeepers. We talked about our favorite perfumes, and both the realities and the exaggerations of reformulations. (On the whole, they felt that reformulations were minor and did not change the vast majority of Lutens perfumes—but there are a handful that are still on the market but noticeably different. One of my perfume collecting regrets is that I once got a “vintage” bottle of Fleurs d’Oranger with the Palais Royal logo and then decided I was not likely to wear it and re-sold it. One of the shopkeepers in Paris confirmed that is one of the Lutens perfumes that has been significantly reformulated and is not really the same anymore. However, he disagreed that Borneo 1834 smells noticeably different now from when it first launched—and Borneo 1834 is his favorite scent, his everyday signature perfume. He also told me Fille en Aiguilles is being discontinued, and a shopkeeper at a different location told me Baptême du Feu is being discontinued.)

It was such a pleasure to smell old favorite scents and sniff new ones (I really like one of their new releases, Écrin de Fumée, and got a sample of that to keep wearing). And, I took home bell jars of two of my favorite lavender perfumes that I previously only had gifted decants of: Encens et Lavande and Fourreau Noir.