Vestal Virgins and A Woman’s Fire - Art Meets Art - Like A Virgin Alberto Morillas and Like A Virgin Unplugged - Fabrice Pellegrin

Written By Danu Seith-Fyr

Madonna- Like a Virgin promotional campaign, Music and Scent, Orange Blossom Botanical drawing - Wikipedia and Blossom-Lucious Amberg, Unsplash

Two versions of a song, twists on a melody, nuances of that tune that is on repeat and defines a certain part of our history. Art Meets Art is a Parisian based brand that I have had the pleasure to know for a few years now, owner/founder Tanguy Le Baud is easy to meet with and talk about his inspiration, dedicated to igniting our senses interlocked between memory, scent and sound, taking several well-known pieces of music, transcending time and using the melodies as keys within the lock of the perfume, the two working in a harmony that sits under your skin just as the music is on loop in your head.

Madonna photos from Like A Virgin promotion

This iconic song by Madonna has been masterfully interpreted by Tanguy Le Baud and two well recognised Perfumers, the original ‘Like A Virgin’ composed by Alberto Morillas and the ‘ Like A Virgin Unplugged’ by Fabrice Pellegrin, originally a Limited Edition, now fully part of the permanent collection, they both carry a certain underscored melody of playful innocence yet in one the strirrings of a flirtatious frivolity and in the other, a burgeoning sensuality explodes off the skin like wildness suddenly unfettered and liberated.

Tanguy Le Baud in Cannes 2023 - our first meeting, DSF, Prinicpal Perfumer Firmenich Fabrice Pellegrin, Master Perfumer Firmenich Alberto Morillas.

Interesting to experience this now classic piece of music and visuals by Madonna which was released back in 1984, now in 2025 through these creations, to scent its impact through these 2 differeent perspectives. Tanguy always wants to immerse us in facets of the musical pieces he is inspired by and to allow us to voyage through time and memory yet also discover something new. Building a momentum, the perfume ignites stirrings, those waves of emotion that begin like concentric ripples upon the water of our memories.






Lucious Amberg - Unsplash, Dark Beauty Magazine, LIke A Virgin - Art Meets Art

Like A Virgin By Alberto Morillas is a delight, a flushed innocence that romps in a carefree dance upon the skin, a perfumed early summer full of fragrant airs and gently blossoming flowers that hints of the fullness to come. It is the tender burgeoning under warming skies that gives us that change of air scented as Spring gathers momentum, that change of demeanour. It pulses on repeat, a blush rising to the cheeks. These are the moments of abandon in playlike pursuits unweighted by full worldly knowledge, it is a return to the liminal threshold of childlike wonder and the beckoning adult world. An inbetween romp. The flowers of late spring and early summer frolic in this creation, we are immersed in their colours, textures and perfumes, the dainty wafts tinged with headier beckonings like a rhthym subdued at first but steady and certain in it’s beat.

White florals - Wikicommons

Freesia is delicate yet bound with that light intoxication that has you curious and coming back for more, Peony, perfuming the peripheries, full of effusive traces, so ephemeral and impermenant, gives the sense of airiness, a promise of a first touch and the momentary frission that passes in an instant yet marks us in memory. Youthful, fresh, the virginal poised, there is the lingering airs of all the possibilities in its generous wake, light enough to wear without weight yet with a presence. Playful, a little mischievous it alludes to unlimited futures that is the priviledge of youth suffused with imaginings of unlimited horizons.

Like a Virgin is flirtatious, subtlety hinting at what may follow, it dances on skin in a fresh sophistication, glimpsing the tentative budding, the emergence of a style and the exuberent womanhood that awaits its time.

Tête : notes aquatiques

  • Cœur : freesia, pivoine, rose

  • Base : musc, ambre

Orange Blossom - Wikicommons, Like a Virgin Unplugged, Dark Beauty Magazine, Only Lovers Left Alive, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston.
‘Like a Virgin, Unplugged’ The duo of Tanguy and Perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin here write a perfume of extraordinary sexuality, beyond sensual, there are overt carnal hints in this bottle. Something of a power unleashed that has been held constrained for just a little too long. Richer and deeper than its predecessor, the fledgling has well and truly flown the nest, sensuality has been given enormous wings. It has the sensation of warmed, flushed skin when touches have ignited that unstoppable fire. Like a Virgin Unplugged has curves, voluptuous and full of graceful movement. Bergamot joins the Freesia’s heady state and the Morroccan Orange Blossom is nothing short of addictive, this is a warm, sun kissed body now immersed in the deeping blue of twilight having a silent drifting conversation between bronzed, salty flesh and pendulous branches laden with scented blossoms, swathes of its perfume exciting ripples in the night airs.

Orange Blossom - Wikicommons

Drawing you close, it emits the scent of arousal, the smell of a quickened pulse, a caught breath, the tiny perspirations of anticipation. This is the scent that draws glances from the crowd, that invites eyes to lock with your own, that lingers in a trail of impact long after you have passed through the throng. There is within it the sense of those deeply mediterranean locations, heated ancient stones and heady nocturnal scents, plants that bloom. The orange blossom is the definitive culprit here, it enters the fray and sweeps over your entirety, trailing milky nuaces in its wake. Sultry and evocative it turns heads and draws shuddered breaths from onlookers, wondering and longing, searching for the source of this olfactory joy that ignites all manner of pleasures within them.

Sensuality is rife here and teeters on the cliff edge of carnality, that sublime limination, the power of this discreet, white bloom is harnessed and amplified with this formulation, enduring long past the twilight hours and into the night. An encounter underlined with tender pulsings and sensuous liasions.

Like a Virgin is the boundary betyween innocence and the stirrings of playful coming of age and Like a Virgin Unplugged, a banquet unleashed, pleasures set in abundance, let the feasting begin.

Top : bergamote, freesia

  • Coeur : fleur d'oranger du Maroc

  • Fond : infusion de lait, vanille

These are modern, edgy perfumes that speak of our strengths and vulnerabilites, sophiscated, playful and joyful.

Danu Seith-Fyr
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