Dua Lipa stars in the campaign for ‘Libre Santal Couture’, YSL Beauty’s new fragrance combining lavender, orange blossom and sandalwood.
YSL Beauty is expanding one of its most recognisable fragrance families with ‘Libre Santal Couture’, the first floral woody Eau de Parfum in the ‘Libre’ collection. To introduce this new chapter, the house has once again turned to its global ambassador, Dua Lipa, who stars in a campaign shot in the heart of the South African desert and directed by Romain Wygas.
The setting could hardly be more fitting for the new creation. While ‘Libre’ has built its identity around the contrast between femininity and traditionally masculine codes of perfumery, this interpretation takes that duality into warmer, more enveloping territory, placing sandalwood at the heart of the composition.
Perfumers Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaïm explain that the challenge was precisely to transform this traditionally masculine woody facet into a new feminine signature. “We worked by wrapping the sensual facets of sandalwood around the feminine heart of Libre. The result is intensely velvety, sensual and addictive,” they explain.
The fragrance combines French lavender with a Moroccan orange blossom accord, also created using Headspace technology to capture the scent of flowers grown in YSL Beauty’s Ourika Community Gardens. The composition is completed with sustainably and responsibly sourced New Caledonian sandalwood, which brings additional warmth and depth to the fragrance.
In the campaign imagery, Dua Lipa embodies this new vision of sensuality against dramatic arid landscapes, while her own rendition of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Think’ provides the soundtrack.
‘Libre Santal Couture’ is available now for €145 (50ml), joining a collection that continues to evolve without abandoning one of YSL’s defining principles: understanding freedom as an attitude.
