Louis Vuitton has been upping our travel game since the brand was founded in 1854. Adored by travellers, shoppers, career women and It-girls alike, Louis Vuitton remains to this day both elegantly designed and finely crafted, yet still fit for the practicalities of travel. So it makes good sense that travel – that act of getting to your destination – has been the inspiration for Louis Vuitton’s stable of women’s fragrances.
The brand’s latest creation, Cœur Battant (which translates from French to “beating heart”) has recently hit shelves, and it too has been guided by the thrill of travelling. Rather than the destination itself, this fragrance evokes that rush of holding your passport in your hand and getting on a plane.
“I was dreaming of creating a perfume full of emotions,” the fragrance’s creator and Louis Vuitton’s in-house perfumer, Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, told marie claire exclusively. “It is exactly the feeling that you can experience on a first date; you feel your heart beating because this moment provokes a positive emotion.”
Cœur Battant rounds out Louis Vuitton’s line-up of fragrances for women to 10. The entire range, which launched in 2016, has been masterfully crafted by Belletrud, and is inspired by not only travel, but also the exceptional raw materials sourced by Belletrud from far-flung locations around the globe. It’s a range so special, it even has its own range of luggage (monogrammed, of course) to transport it.
“I want to celebrate and enjoy the freedom I have during my creative process,” says Belletrud. “It is the most important thing for me when I work on a fragrance. I really like proposing new things [and] travelling all around the world to find the best quality raw materials and inspirations.”
With notes of pear, spice and jasmine, this is a scent that bounces between light and dark. “For Les Parfums Louis Vuitton, my signature is to create perfumes based on contrast by associating different and unexpected ingredients,” says Belletrud. Pear is the fresh and fruity first note you detect on the initial spritz of the perfume. “I wanted to reproduce the freshness and fruitiness you feel when you bite into a pear,” explains Belletrud. “I used a natural molecule – the real one you have in an actual pear.”
Let it linger and you’ll smell hints of Egyptian jasmine, which proudly sits at the fragrance’s heart. It’s so crisp and sensorial, you feel immediately transported to an exotic land. “I wanted to pay tribute to Egyptian jasmine – a sensual, fresh and radiant flower,” says Belletrud. “This type of jasmine is much spicier and more sensual than jasmine from Grasse [France].”
Belletrud is well known for creating incredibly covetable fragrances that are, by nature, both complex yet deceptively pure (think cult scents Issey Miyake L’eau d’Issey and Giorgio Armani Acqua di Giò for men). And this latest release from the perfumer is bound to cause a heady reaction among Louis Vuitton fans too.
Cœur Battant is an intoxicating blend of energy, positivity and luxury. Spray it on your skin and you could well be motivated to take on that new challenge – whether that’s a personal journey or an intrepid trip to a new destination. Monogrammed bags at the ready.
This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of marie claire.
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