SPOTLIGHT ON Free SPIRIT

Louis Vuitton has launched a super-luxurious collection of fragrances that defy the rules and lift the spirits, writes Sally Hunwick

- Sally Hunwick

In a world where we are unable to travel freely and easily to far-flung locations, it’s little wonder that fragrance has become a way to escape the mundanities of everyday living. Most of us are hankering for a good dose of luxury too, something special to kick our senses out of the Covid-induced stupor.

Enter Louis Vuitton Les Extraits. The new collection of five contemporary fragrances throws out the rule book of perfumery and offers a reinvention of the olfactory families.

When I visit (albeit virtually) the Louis Vuitton headquarters in Grasse, France, to meet in-house master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, I experience that now all-too-familiar feeling of longing to be somewhere else – to be in the world’s fragrance capital and see life through that uniquely soft pastel light of the South of France.

But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we can have experiences without needing to pack a bag. And scent is one of the best transporters going, whether it’s for a sense of escapism or a nostalgic trip back to those moments when life felt a bit more certain.

At the centre of this new collection of scents, for both women and men, are the ingredients – the extraits. “I wanted to reinvent the notion of an extrait in a contemporary way,” Belletrud says. “I want to venture where no-one goes.”