Le Labo Lys 41: Jasmine, Tuberose & Lily Notes

At a glance

Lys 41 is a Le Labo eau de parfum composed by Daphné Bugey and launched in 2013. It is a dense white floral: lily, jasmine, tuberose and tiaré over woods, vanilla and musk.

“Lys” is French for lily. It is part of the house’s permanent collection and still in production.

Creation and context

Le Labo was founded in New York in 2006 by Fabrice Penot and Eddie Roschi, and was bought by the Estée Lauder Companies in 2014. Its fragrances are named for a principal material and the number of ingredients in the formula, so Lys 41 announces a lily composition built from 41 materials.

The house’s presentation is part of the product. Bottles are labelled by hand with the buyer’s name, and in the shops the fragrance is blended to order, a ritual meant to signal freshness and craft. Lys 41 is sold the same way, through Le Labo’s own boutiques and website and through specialist retailers.

Lys 41 arrived in 2013 together with Ylang 49 and Limette 37, a three-fragrance release reported by both Kafkaesque and ÇaFleureBon.

Daphné Bugey was already one of the house’s key perfumers. She had composed two of Le Labo’s original 2006 fragrances, Rose 31 and Bergamote 22, and Lys 41 gave her a much fuller, more opulent brief than either.

The composition

Le Labo has not published the formula. The structure below uses the materials named by at least two independent reviews.

Lily yields almost no usable natural extract, so a lily in perfume is usually an accord, built from other materials to suggest the flower. In Lys 41 it is supported by two of the most powerful white flowers in the perfumer’s palette, jasmine and tuberose, and the result is a bouquet rather than a single flower. Tiaré, the Tahitian gardenia usually used as a flower-infused oil, adds a faintly coconut, sun-warmed softness that links the flowers to the vanilla below.

Wearers disagree about which flower leads. ÇaFleureBon hears lily throughout; Fragrantica’s description, drawing on user reviews, finds tuberose dominant despite the name. Both describe the same overall effect: a heady white bouquet settling onto a soft vanilla-and-musk base.

Why it matters

Lys 41 is a good example of what niche perfumery was offering by the early 2010s. The subject is traditional, a big white floral in the lineage of the great tuberose and jasmine perfumes, but the presentation is Le Labo’s: an ingredient count in the name, a lab-style label and a formula compounded close to the point of sale.

It is also unusually concentrated. Kafkaesque and ÇaFleureBon both report the eau de parfum at around 25 percent perfume oil, a strength closer to an extrait than to most designer eaux de parfum.

Reformulation and editions

Lys 41 is sold as an eau de parfum. Le Labo has not published a reformulation history, and the fragrance has stayed in the core collection since its 2013 launch.

Its main materials are floral absolutes, vanilla and musks rather than the most heavily restricted classes, so the broad character should be stable, though any formula this rich is subject to routine adjustment.

Wearing it today

Expect a big, creamy white floral from the first spray, with strong projection and long wear. Like most white florals of this density it blooms in warm weather, and it is worn by men as well as women.

Start with one spray: at this concentration a second can overwhelm a room. Test it on skin, not paper, and give it an hour to reach the vanilla-musk base, which is where most wearers decide whether it is for them. If it still feels too loud, wear it on a single pulse point and let the base do the work.

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