Love speaks every language so there’s no excuse for ignoring St Valentine when he comes a-calling this year. Treat your loved one to a special Valentine's Gift from Les Senteurs. Whether you’re looking for a sensual, romantic or a big “I love you” perfume our specially curated Valentine’s Collection has something for everyone. Step back in time and it’s clear to see that fragrance and love have long been happy partners in crime. Stimulating the senses, heightening the emotion, fragrance captures the mood like no other.
But this has not always been the case. In centuries gone by, messages of love were often conveyed through music; pictures and poems. A combination of complex symbols and codes to enchant and intrigue the recipient but often disguise the sender. Noisily with the language of drums and bells; silently with smoke signals, smouldering looks and symbols. Hearts, cupids, swans, doves, gloves, arrows, peaches, peonies, knots, apples and roses have all been used as symbols of romantic love. King Edward VII famously gifted Alice Keppel with jewellery spelling out saucy messages in miniature semaphore flags.
Remember all this when selecting perfume as a gift and maybe weave a few esoteric emblems into your choice. Say it with scent.
Be adventurous and reference other cultures: think Chinese orchids, French muguet, Welsh Love Spoons, scarlet Japanese camellias, Swiss edelweiss, Irish Claddagh rings.
Our ancestors adored constructing riddles and puzzles using images and word play to flatter the object of their affection. This is one reason why the craze for tulips so excited seventeenth century Europe. The brilliant petals represented flames of passion and desire whilst the black stamens were the burned-out ashes of love.
Subtlety and allusion are not perhaps the most fashionable of modern tropes but - used artfully - they can be very intriguing and seductive to the recipient.
You might make a play on words with your lover’s name; or browse those Victorian dictionaries of the language of flowers where every blossom represents a different emotion or thought. Make up an olfactory bouquet. Take roses - ambassador of love; a spray of jasmine - grace & elegance - and exotic tuberose - dangerous pleasures; then let those fragrances express your romantic meditations and feelings.
And of course the name of a perfume is key to its allure. If composing a love letter seems too much to ask then browse our shelves for a label that says a little something of what is in your heart:
Serge Lutens once again provides his take on the rose - married with a piquant pepper note, a wisp of silvery coolness against warm musks.
A creamy explosion, where musk intermingles with iris butter and transmits the powerful balm of vanilla, followed by the friction of Tonka against benzoin.
A scent all about the daily joy of being blissfully in love: fresh every morning - soft and caressing in the evening. Subtle, delicate and sophisticated.
The dreamed souvenir of ocean breezes blowing on the outskirts of Jupiter on the satellite Ganymede. Mandarin, lively and sour, violet, magnetic and ambiguous with suede-leather accents.
An overdose of the finest Turkish rose absolute, blended with raspberry, cassis, clove, cinnamon, patchouli and amber. Simmering and stunning, profound sillage and mysterious alluring sexuality.
An authoritative blend of galbanum, bay rum, musk, incense and iris laced with pimento and cedar.
With this fresh, floral and bright eau de parfum, Francis Kurkdjian gives men the power to wear a rose.
A soft sweet accord of marshmallow and Moroccan orange flower is succeeded by the embrace of Turkish rose, sambac jasmine and Florentine iris, enriched with vanilla and musk.
Green piquant accords of lime, basil and mint are deepened and sweetened with fragrant sandalwood. Mouth-wateringly gorgeous!
The radiance and sophistication of an illuminated Parisian gala evening. The perpetual glamorous night of seduction and mystery begins with a liberal application of Grand Soir.
You can be suggestive, discreet, ironic or direct, just as you wish! But let the perfume speak to you and think of how it will resonate with the recipient.
Choosing a fragrance is instinctive. The brain seizes on the scent that it needs; the scent that balances, feeds and harmonises its moods. All smells are transmitted to the frontal lobes of the brain with amazing rapidity. Here, in one tiny power-house of the senses, the cells that govern memory meet those which control moods, emotions and the desires of the flesh. No wonder people sometimes laugh and cry uncontrollably when they first smell the fragrance that takes their heart by surprise.
And so, she will always remember the scent you wore on valentines night; and he will always be thinking of you when he smells that perfume he offered you a lifetime ago.
Perfume is the perfect gift of love: the experience is imperishable and the memory lasts for ever!