That’s the one word that defines Yves Saint Laurent. Always on the edge. Experimenting without constraints. Breaking boundaries. Fearlessly self-confident, the couturier dared to bare it all in 1971, in an intimate, provocative nude portrait advertising his first masculine scent. Nude: the ultimate gesture of self-esteem from the man who lived by the motto Tout, Mais Terriblement – “Everything, but with excess”. And for the women he inspires.
Today, Libre Eau De Toilette unveils a new, more intimate facet of Dua Lipa’s fierce femininity, defiantly offering her naked skin to the sun in an exhilarating, hedonistic statement of freedom – but always with a couture edge. Walking the line between the masculine and the feminine, the new fragrance composed by Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaïm is everything that makes Libre Eau De Parfum so It-conic. But reinterpreted with a bright, fresh sensuality that makes it more dazzling and skinenveloping than ever, its delicate light golden pink nuance undressed in all its sexy glory by a new, taller iteration of Libre’s It-couture bottle.
Infusing a pure, soft white tea accord into the freshness of Diva lavender and the burning sensuality of orange blossom absolute, Libre Eau De Toilette accents the fragrance’s signature tension between cool and hot. The caress of the sun and the freshness of water. A sexy fusion of scent and bare flesh, expressing today’s need for more transparency and human connection.
Because freedom is more relevant now than it ever was. It resonates in a personal, emotional, intimate manner. More than a state of mind, it’s a way to live. To feel everything on your skin. To embrace who you are, your emotions, your desires. Burning bright. Feeling right. Smelling marvelous all the while, in the radiant sillage of Libre Eau De Toilette.
A sexy shiver on bare skin
With Libre Eau De Toilette, Yves Saint Laurent Beauté’s iconic scent unveils its freshest, brightest, most feminine interpretation yet, expressed by its delicate light golden pink colour inspired by the iconic nude nuance of the Saint Laurent collections.
“Transparency. Limpidity. Sincerity.” Those are the key words that drove Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaïm, who authored Libre Eau De Parfum, as they remastered the formula into an Eau de Toilette as bold and edgy as the original, yet with a more streamlined, intimate vibe. Emotion rather than action. Accenting the scent’s contrasts by creating a fluid, airy space between the notes, as pure and clean as a wide-open blue sky.
“I am aware that I made fashion progress, and that I allowed women to access a world of freedom that was prohibited to them until then.” – Yves Saint Laurent
The design of Libre rests on the sexy, edgy interplay between its two starring ingredients, specifically tailored for Yves Saint Laurent Beauté: aromatic Diva lavender from Provence (France) and carnal orange blossom absolute from Morocco. The modernity of its concept is based on the tension between the masculinity of its fougère structure – a classic fragrance family for men, – and the utter femininity of its white floral heart.
Inspired by the refined aroma of budding tea leaves, a new, luminous golden white tea accord accents the radiance of the orange blossom and, boosts the freshness of the lavender. Its vegetal delicacy and fruitiness also blend with the floral verdancy of a soft lily-of-the-valley note, uniting the composition. Lighter, fresher, and subtler than the more often used black tea note, the limpid golden white tea accord, blended from a combination of natural and man-made ingredients, adds clarity and transparency to the fragrance.
“We were looking for a way to infuse pureness and transparency into the formula. The golden white tea accord came to us spontaneously. It just felt right”, the Master Perfumers explain. “As its non-gendered, it adds a new, more delicate dimension to the tension between the masculine and the feminine that is the signature of Libre.”
Laced with a splash of sparkling bergamot, crystalline pear, and crisp apple accord, “the top notes open the fragrance with a smile”, say the Perfumers. Then, like she’d flash golden naked skin under a crisply cut blazer, the heart of the scent bares its sun-kissed sensuality: heady orange blossom and jasmine sambac absolutes cooled by the pure, rounded, green-edged accents of the lily-of-the-valley accord.
But despite the candour of the new golden white tea and lily-of-the valley accords, Libre Eau De Toilette can still turn the heat on. As it sheds the petals of its floral heart, it reveals a peerless quality of Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, expressing all the rich aromas of a fully ripened pod. It’s cool. It’s hot. It’s pure. With its contrasts creating almost tactile effects on your skin, Libre Eau De Toilette simmers with sensuality. The scent of freedom has never been so up close and personal.
A new nude signature
You don’t touch an icon. Until you do. To express the soaring notes of the new Libre Eau De Toilette, Suzanne Dalton has made Libre’s emblematic flacon taller, creating an impression of lightness and airiness. All the better to undress the new light golden pink nuance of the scent, in all its sexy glory. As a contrast to the verticality of the flacon, the oversized horizontal Cassandre glows like a piece of couture jewellery on bare skin. Bent to follow the sharp angle of the bottle and nailed to the glass – a prowess of engineering, the legendary logo flashes gold in the midday sun.
In another sexy, provocative detail, a precision-cut glass V underlines the décolletage of the Y, cutting deep into the glass of the geometric bottle, as trim and streamlined as a tailored YSL tuxedo. Adding a provocative touch couture asymmetry, the slanted black cap that tops off the bottle accents the sleek golden chain wound around its neck. Because the YSL woman feels free to wear chains. As long as they’re gold. Anyway, she can break them whenever she wants. Show skin. Experience undressed freedom. Because there’s no more emotional word to define women, today. Libre.
