Showing posts with label etat libre d'orange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label etat libre d'orange. Show all posts

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Etat Libre d'Orange Une Amourette

One is prepped for interesting things, since Roland Mouret was intent on commissioning a perfume collaboration to the maverick French firm of Etat Libre d'Orange for some time, eyeing creative director Etienne de Swardt as a fellow pioneer.


Mouret consolidated his fashion imprint through the arc of several designs of his divising: the Galaxy dress, the Moon, Pigalle, Titanium, and others following those. To paraphrase Christian Dior, each and every one of them appears coming out of his perfume named Une Amourette and composed by refined craftswoman Daniela Andrier Roche; best known for her Prada opus, Andrier settled upon an illusory and deceptive contraption. Designs and dresses like that might look like they could be made by anyone, but actually entail high skills and imaginative powers.

In Une Amourette the patchouli is rendered in the modern "cleaned up" style (less of the animalic darkness and more of the minty, camphorous quality) that makes for an excellent folding material for the pepper-leather axis from one angle and for the neroli-iris (which comes across as starchy-tart) axis from the other. The balance is precarious, yet in typical Andrier style the effect in Etat Libre d'Orange's Une Amourette Roland Mouret is sublimely modern; clean, powerful, rather masculine in a cornucopia of ersatz fruit salads & cotton candy vats in the feminine fragrances aisle. It's a rather weird scent, nonetheless, that truly deserves its place amongst the sophisticated line-up of the Etat Libre d'Orange collection.

A fairy tale without a dragon; only cerebral and sensuous enjoyment.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Interview: Chandler Burr Shoots from the Hip for Etat Libre d'Orange

Chandler Burr shoots from the hip. This is probably why I consider him a friend. Truth, you see, possesses that rare beauty that can cut like a knife, but still you end up admiring the scarlet track lines. Here's the interview he granted me for the launch of You or Someone Like You, the upcoming fragrant release from Etat Libre d'Orange. Fasten your seatbelts, darlings, it's a bumpy (but oh so effing good!) ride.



Elena Vosnaki: So Chandler...There is a certain path to follow in the realm of being interested in how a seemingly mundane thing can be artistic and can produce fascination. First comes learning about what makes a perfume lover interested in the first place (ergo The Emperor of Scent). Then comes learning about the craft (A Scent of the Nile). Then comes learning about the industry at large (The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry). Then come personal assessments of those mysterious smelly things (NYT Scent critic column). And there are scent dinners (how would it feel if we combined two complementary senses together?) and curating a "blind test" line plus an Art of Scent exhibition (how would it feel if we erased everyone's perceived memory with a magic wand like Men in Black and THEN asked them their honest opinions on Duschamps' Urinal?).

Does art directing a perfume launch feel anti-climatic in comparison?


Chandler Burr: Wow, you've synthesized my entire scent career arc into a frighteningly accurate dialectic. I actually have a very specific answer for you: It was not anti-climactic at all. In fact, art directing a perfume was quite difficult, more so than I imagined before I did it, and my view of whether it came at the right time or the wrong time in my trajectory is split exactly in two. In part I wish I'd done it in 2005, after Emperor, the New Yorker piece "Nile," and Perfect Scent but just before I joined the Times and prepared to become a critic. Why. Because not surprisingly it gave me a deeper, as well as a different, understanding and appreciation for the artistic, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical demands on a scent artist -- Caroline Sabas, in my fortunate experience -- in creating one of these fucking works. For the sake of my criticism, it would axiomatically have made it better. (I think every critic should at least try to create a few works in the medium of the critique. The result has to be humility and wisdom, even for those few who'd turn out to have talent.)

At the same time, for the sake of You Or Someone Like You itself, I'm glad it didn't come till after the Times and the Art of Scent exhibition because those two experiences made me think more about the pure aesthetics and the subtleties of scent art, and I put those into the work I did with Caroline.

 It's an extremely strange relationship, creative director and perfumer. I think the closest analogy would be architect and builder. (Definitely not composer and conductor, that doesn't fit. Nor does author and editor fit, at all.) Studio executive and movie director is actually very good. I had a vision for a work that I had virtually no ability to make myself. I had to communicate it to Caroline. At its best, human communication sucks. The difficulty of telling Caroline what I wanted / didn't want/ liked/ didn't like/ wanted changed/ how I wanted it changed, plus asking for her opinion, which I found extremely valuable, and understanding her perception and the obstacles she faced. Jesus.

Elena Vosnaki: Did Etat Libre d'Orange approach you or you them with the spermatic idea? Have they read your novel?

Chandler Burr: Etienne had read my novel and loved the main character and narrator, an Englishwoman named Anne Rosenbaum who years before had married an American guy -he's now a studio exec- and lives with him in the Hollywood Hills. Also Anne is a reader-- literature is crucial to the novel. Etienne really liked the title as well. Etienne had mentioned a few times over the years our doing a project together, and I think his collection is arguably the single most creatively imaginative and risk-taking in existence today, so I was interested. But I sure as hell wasn't going to creatively direct a scent. I never intended to. I always told people that. I think Etienne would tell you that he found me somewhat frustrating to work with because, along with being a perfectionist, I was highly ambivalent and undecided about whether I should be doing that job.

Although interestingly none of my doubt was about what I wanted for the scent itself. My doubt was entirely, Was I saying the right things to Caroline or was I talking gibberish? Was I clear? And I know for a fact I sometimes wasn't. Seriously frustrating. Was I too demanding? Was I perceiving reality? Was I "projecting" or self deluding when I hit things I wanted changed or didn't like? Creative directing a perfume is like asking a painter to create Rorschach blots, but in a way you want them, and then making yourself interpret them, and then asking the painter to redo them… Actually, that may be complete horse shit and incoherent, but that's what it feels like sometimes. The scent kept evolving. The Givaudan evaluators, who were very serious and committed to the project, gave me excellent feedback. We finally let Etienne smell the thing, and he liked it, but he liked it too much for my taste, and I thought, "Oh, damnit…" Then went back to Caroline and asked for more changes.


Elena Vosnaki: Is the scent concept a meta-reading of the novel's idea of Otherness? It seems so to me!

Chandler Burr: OK, no. No. Wait, have you read the novel? If you did and told me you did, I completely forgot. [Elena: Yes, I have. No, I did not.] Otherness is one very good way to describe You's central theme. Or stupid, racist understandings of Otherness as opposed to serious, meaningful understandings of Otherness. Certainly it's about the fact that the Big Four, the largest four theological global conglomerates competing for market share, should be shut down and that we need to replace God, which doesn't exist, with good, which does, and that literature shows us this. Hell, I've gone off the rails now, but that's sort of the point, which is that the scent's concept has zero to do with any of this. It's incredibly simple. It's the scent that Anne would wear. No meta, no super. I thought: She lives in LA, where in my experience 99% of people recoil at the word "perfume" and anything heavier than Eau de Thé Vert is considered a fire in a coal mine. I get that. Anne would wear a post-perfume scent. (When people, normal people, not you and me and perfume shrine readers, say "perfumey" they mean aldehydic + heavy floral, which they associate, almost always correctly, with grandma. For ten years, Giorgio of Beverly Hills covered Beverly Hills like chlorine gas, and it cured everyone in LA of every wearing "perfume" in quotes again.)

I knew Anne's scent would be Luminist, the school Ellena both pioneered and uniquely mastered, it would be Naturalist/Realist, i.e. it would contain references to the natural world. Anne is a gardener, and her garden--I put their house on Macapa Drive above the 101 if you want to googlemap it--is a central location in the novel. And that's it. That's all Caroline and I did -- tried to make a perfume for this person who doesn't exist.

(By the way, you know what a dick I am about "gendering" fragrances. You was made for a female character, and as I've often said if you actually believe that means men shouldn't wear it, you don't know anything about scent.)


Elena Vosnaki: Well... We're both dicks then. But Los Angeles is semiotically a loaded place for several reasons. Some of which are described in your text about the inspiration behind the scent. Some others are added by the recipient of the smell depending on whether their associations come from the cinematic realm (glamor and/or decadence) or an actual visit to the place (physical sensations hitting the nose velcro). What was the single most important element that you thought that You or Someone Like You needed to focus on?

Chandler Burr: A culture, for lack of a better word. Ethos? Mindset? You focuses on contemporary Los Angeles, which is more a state of mind than an actual place. The LA sun creates a huge olfactory output. The smell of that hot, hot sun hitting the asphalt, the concrete, the hills of dry dust and palm trees, the ocean water. The eucalyptus, the morning overcast, which for me always focuses the scents like a magnifying glass when I go out to my car at 7am and everything is silent and coated in gray. Then it burns off by 10 and the sun is creating a different perfume. Sorry, I'm giving real world references when my point is that LA lives inside these scents and radiates its fabulous, insane, beautiful LA-ness through them.

I think I don’t know how to answer this question.

Well, here's something. The version of You we went with wasn't the one I myself was going to choose. We went -- and I don't regret this at all, I completely support this -- with a very similar but different one because there was an aspect of it that Etienne, Caroline, and the Givaudan team preferred for a reason. I don't want to be specific, but we wore and talked about them at length, I listened to them, and in the end I thought "You know, I'm going to trust them." So I did. As a journalist and critic, I hated the plastic creative director script, "OMG, it's my scent, it's perfection incarnate, my perfumer reached into my brain and put my neurons in a bottle, I love this scent more than my own lung tissue" etc etc. I think You is a good scent. I think people who like its aesthetic school will like it. It's not Drake (a bore), it's not Max Richter's Sleep (which I'm playing on my computer as I write this) and it's not Katy Perry (so fun). It's The Chainsmokers "Closer" meets a Satie tone poem. And that's exactly what I wanted. 

via
Elena Vosnaki: Is it easier to work with a perfumer when you know a bit about the actual bits that go into the formula or did you find this knowledge detracted from the artistic process like -say- focusing on whether one is using Prussian Blue oils on thick canvas instead of the more fluid acrylic in the same shade?

Chandler Burr: I called Karyn Khoury just before starting to work with Caroline, and she gave me great advice, including "Be patient. Don't panic if you lose youself in the mods. Keep breathing, and they'll come back into focus." She also said, "I never suggest specific materials to the perfumer." That one I completely reversed on. I know I don't want birch tar or amyl allyl caproate. I know it. And I found that far from throwing Caroline, when I suggested a material, or specified one I didn't want, it actually helped her understand, it communicated what I wanted, even if the material I said I wanted wasn't, in fact, the best one for that job and she used a different one. I find it insanely helpful to know what I know about raw materials. Crazy helpful.

 Because I hate the "So what are the 'notes'?" idiot reductionism that we apply to scent but would never apply to painting or music because we respect those mediums ("Well, does it have violas in it? I only listen to music with violas. The oboe? I'm not buying anything with an oboe!") I finally got Etienne to agree that not he, nor Etat, nor Givaudan, nor I, no one was going to talk about the raw materials in You. It's THE FUCKING WORK. Don't walk down the street with your headphones on second guessing the sound mixer on Frank Ocean's music. Just listen to the music. They thought I was crazy which is to say they thought I was stupid. Maybe. I've seen two pages of comments on my "Don't ask me about the materials" stance, and on both a majority of people said, "Burr is such a pretentious asshole." Whatever, man, you do, go focus on "notes" and buy something else. Or smell You and buy it if you like it. See, THIS is really cool -- I wrote this a thousand times in the New York Times, and now I get to put my money, or my no money, where my big mouth is.


Elena Vosnaki: This is the best test for anyone's inherent arrogance I suppose! So continue being honest: How many mods did it take for this to get finalised with Caroline Sabas? I hear 200-300 or more is not unusual for major releases and I do know of a few niche ones which took as many. Is it always better to try and try again or is there a fine point when you are destroying the soul of the creation? I find that constant editing really does work with writing (and this is why I'm asking you as your being an author informs your frame of thought and habit). It does not necessarily work with musical interpretation however. One cannot bribring back that rush of feeling that is new and "innocent" once we parse a musical piece to bits; our playing tends to become effortless but a tiny bit constipated (for lack of a better term?). How is it with perfume art direction? Does one know when to stop?

Chandler Burr: I can honestly say I have no idea how many mods Caroline made. And I really don't think it matters. You know, this "number of mods" stat they hand out, 99% of the time it's bullshit like everthing else in our industry that's given to the public. The more the mods, the closer to sainthood or some crap like that. Bitch, please. You can nail a perfume in two mods, and I know because Frederic Malle did (and fuck me if I can remember which perfume it is…?! Frederic told me this at lunch years ago, and I loved hearing it. He asked for one, very small, very specific adjustment of the first mod, and that was it. He agrees with me that The Award For The Most Mods is only coveted by numbskulls.

Elena Vosnaki: Is this project to be repeated in a second scent launch or has the circle closed on this and there's a different stop to the bus ride on that path we talked about in the beginning?
Chandler Burr: This is it. I'm working on several other projects, all connected to scent, none to creative directing another one.

Thanks Chandler for a fabulous interview. Best of luck with the perfume launch!






Saturday, March 4, 2017

Etat Libre d'Orange You or Someone Like You: Chandler Burr Shares His Inspiration Behind the Fragrance

The staccato bravado of État Libre d'Orange's fragrant creations is the stuff of legend. (Who can forfeit their sentiments upon smelling the infamous Secretions Magnifiques for example?). The credibility and creative inquisitiveness of Chandler Burr is the stuff of steadfast reality. Imagine combing the two into a single item that you can actually claim as your own.

To make it short and concise, Chandler Burr, author of the novel You or Someone Like You among other works, former NY Times scent critic and curator of museum exhibitions and scent dinners, has art directed a perfume for  État Libre d'Orange that officially launches on April 3, 2017, named You or Someone Like You.

Here is what Chandler told me about the inspiration behind the new niche perfume launch You or Someone Like You.

 "There is an Englishwoman who doesn’t exist. Her name is Anne Rosenbaum, and I created her in my novel “You Or Someone Like You.” She lives, with her movie executive husband, in a house high in the blue air of the Hollywood Hills, just off Mulholland Drive, overlooking Los Angeles above the 101. 

 I’m fascinated by LA, this strange dream factory that exists in its eternal, relentless present tense, its otherworldly beauty both effortlessly natural and ingeniously artificial. A movie that makes movies. Palm trees, the symbol of LA, aren’t natural there. They were imported, placed in the hills, “but then,” Anne observes to you, “so was I.” 

Los Angeles’ smells mesmerize, the astringent mint/green of eucalyptus, wild jasmine vines unselfconsciously climbing the stop signs, catalyzed car exhaust, hot California sun on ocean water (although “You” contains no jasmine or eucalyptus; if you need to know what it’s made of, “You” is not for you). 

When Etat Libre d’Orange approached me about creative directing, my perfumer Caroline Sabas and I created not a “perfume” -- people in Los Angeles don’t wear perfume – but a specific scent, the scent someone like Anne would wear, an Angelino Englishwoman high in the hills in the blue air."

Sounds like something I should dig with the fervor of a scent hound. Stay tuned because we have an exclusive interview with Chandler Burr coming up soon. 

NB. There is an Etat Liubre d'Orange discovery set sold on Amazon here and another on on this link.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Etat Libre d'Orange The Afternoon of a Faun & Dangerous Complicity: new fragrances

Etat Libre d'Orange have stunned us with Jasmin et Cigarette and Like This. They have surprised us pleasantly with Fils de Dieu du Riz et des Agrumes and Archives 69. They have had our jaw dropped on the floor with Secretions Magnifiques in a most memorable way. And now, set for release for October 2012, the French niche brand is issuing something that has me reminiscing of the days when I was practicing for piano solos at the Conservatoire, listening from the adjoining rooms all the other musicians practicing as well; namely a fragrance inspired by a most famous musical piece, L'apres midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy set into a ballet infamously by Nijinsky.
And to follow, there's yet another fragrance launched in autumn 2012 stepped in the myth of original sin...


The symphonic poem by Debussy derives its theme of the wanderings of a mythological creature, a faun, symbol of the wild forest life, from another source too: the erotically charged poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, The Afternoon of a Faun (1876).

 "The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees; 
And our blood, aflame for her who will take it, 
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire. 
At the hour when this wood's dyed with gold and with ashes. 
A festival glows in the leafage extinguished: 
Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus 
On your lava fields placing her candid feet, 
When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies." [excerpt]

The new Etat Libre d'Orange fragrance romantically named The Afternoon of a Faun is composed by perfumer is Ralf Schwieger (of Lipstick Rose fame) and will include notes of bergamot, pepper, cinnamon, incense, immortelle (everlasting flower), orris, myrrh, leather, benzoin. Sounds like the erotic dream of the amorous faun is passed on into the olfactory domain now...



 Etat Libre d'Orange also issues another fragrance, Dangerous Complicity, inspired by Adam and Eve and their loaded story in the garden of Eden; a charged olfactory composition that will create talk thanks to its ingredients if nothing else. Perfume Violaine Collas combined Rum Jungle Essence by Mane, ginger JE, coconut JE, bay essence, calamus essence, osmanthus absolute, Egyptian jasmine absolute, ylang ylang essence, lorenox (an aromatic woody-leathery base developed by Mane), patchouli essence, a leather accord, sandalwood, and Cashmeran.

music: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, L'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, directed by Charles Édouard Dutoit.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Etat Libre d'Orange Bijou Romantique: fragrance review

~You let yourself be impressed by that sailor with the pierced ear?
~But no...
Caïn to Pandora Groosvenore (nicknamed "bijou romantique" by said sailor) in Hugo Pratt's La ballata del mare salato/ La ballade de la mer salee comics book starring Corto Maltese

The French have a saying "le parfum bijou" denoting both the literal sense (a perfume carried in a jewel receptible) and the metaphorical (a fragrance that adorns and highlights the beauty of its wearer). Bijou Romantique by Etat Libre d'Orange comes with little of the irreverence that the French brand exhibits and plenty of the beautyfying factor. I'd call it féérique myself (fairy-like, fairy-made). It's delicate, lovely, and oddly savoury, breaking the impression we have of oriental gourmand (i.e. dessert-like) perfumes into tiny slivers, much as it was done with Etat Libre d'Orange Fils de Dieu, their other new release for 2012. Bijou Romantique stops just short of being "skanky" or "dirty" (in a good way) -see Amaranthine by Penhaligon's- offering a deceptive "bombshell" fragrance for those women (and the adventurous men sharing it) who demand that their perfume acts as morale boosting for those approaching them. An appeal as timeless as the beauty whose virtue has a "price far above rubies", a Scriptures phrase that serves as the motto for the company.
Composed by perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui it's no wonder; it was Mathilde who signed the critically acclaimed Tilda Swinton Like This, you see, and she's also the composer of that controversial ~but eminently interesting~ accord of fig and caviar in Thierry Mugler's Womanity.

With Bijou Romantique Bijaoui offers a nuanced composition that hovers on the precipice between savory and sweet, rich and satisfying, exploiting the subtle chocolate-like facets of iris and vetiver and contrasting them with the natural creaminess of vanilla and benzoin resin with a fresh lemony top note. Laboratoire Mane’s captive Evee ® molecule bridges the gap between the sweet elements and the soft rosy spices. As Bijaoui explains herself in an interview on French TV: "My luck at Mane is to have an important team of researchers constantly developing new molecules and finalizing new extraction techniques. Thanks to their extraction technique called "Jungle Essence" we perfumers at Mane, were able to create a new olfactory family, the sweet/savory family. The Jungle Essence technology allowed us to extract scents never extracted before: fig and caviar. Jungle Essence offers new possibilities, new scents, using ingredients non extractable through conventional methods. (nuts, coconut…) The Jungle Essence process produces a natural extract. This extract can be directly used in perfumed or flavoured compositions."
In Bijou Romantique the proceedings take on a darker, more complex character in the main plot, thanks to the inclusion of a musky-woody background where the sweet-liquorice note of patchouli is clearly detectable. Patchouli is of course a beloved niche fragrances element, coming back from the hippie 1960s with a vengeance, but in contrast to Nobril Immense by the same company where it's too potent, too sweet, here it's nuanced with the protagonist: the ripe fruity note of tropical ylang ylang and the soft rosy nuance of pink pepper.

Tender, inviting and multi-facetted, Bijou Romantique is like a nostalgic cameo pinned on the edge of a low neckline. Farewell Pandora!



The transparency and cozy gourmand factor of Bijou Romantique is sure to entice those who liked The Different Company's Oriental Lounge or Fendi's discontinued (but marvellous) Theorema and might be of interest for anyone exploring niche gourmand perfumes (such as the Micallef line Les Notes Gourmandes or those by Les Néréides)

Notes for Etat Libre d'Orange Bijou Romantique:
Bergamot, Italian lemon, pink pepper essence, ylang-ylang, clary sage, Tuscan iris, Jungle Essence coconut, Haitian vetiver, patchouli, benzoin, vanilla.

Bijour Romantique is available as Eau de Parfum 50ml at the official site, Henri Bendels, MiN New York and online from Luckyscent and Les Santeurs.

pic via http://ilmioblog-lu.blogspot.com and http://avozportalegrense.blogspot.com

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Etat Libre d'Orange Malaise of the 1970s fragrance: Change of Name, Change of Pace

Etat Libre d'Orange changes the name of their Sex Pistols fragrance (a 2010 release for French Sephora) into a more encompassing name and concept ~and please note this might be one of many to follow. The official site of the niche French brand even declares: The Sex Pistols are dead, long live Malaise (hope not, in the literal sense of the word!). "We thought it was hilarious to name a juice after a band whose stars were called Rotten and Vicious so we could sell it in a cosmetics emporium. But that’s not necessarily the whole story. In fact, we have many more in stock.
Because what is perfume, when you think of it? A potion we use to reinvent our memories. The matrix of as many stories as there are ways of getting into the scent. So what if we drew the consequence of this story-generating mechanism by dressing up the same perfume with as many names, characters and plotlines as it inspires? What if we gave it avatars? So we’re taking ‘Sex Pistols’ and giving it a new name that fits these troubled times…"

But let's see how the presentation changed:

Relive the anarchy of Britain in the punk age with the Etat Libre d'Orange Malaise of the 1970s Eau de Parfum.
Inspired by a wealth of seventies pop culture references, from Star Wars to The Stranglers, Malaise of the 1970s captures the resistant and tumultuous spirit of the times. A metallic juice that resonates like the twang of a guitar string, its sharpness reminiscent of safety pins fastened to tartan. A distillation of rebellion, music and raw emotion.
This scent from Etat Libre d'Orange blends the piquancy of black pepper and electric aldehydes with the headiness of patchouli and leather. Like an act of resistance, you cannot keep it out of your body any more than you can stop breathing. Blast off the last wafts of patchouli tailing after the Summer of Love. Growl out "No More Heroes". Take off to a galaxy far, far away. and indulge in the unique malaise of the 1970s.


Notes for Malaise of the 1970s: Citrus, Black Pepper, Amber, Prune, Electric Aldehydes, Heliotrope, Patchouli, Orcanox, Leather.

One note: Trainspotting came out in 1996. (Even if McGregor became Obi-Wan later on). Just so you know. 

Watch a clip on the brand and its manifesto/aims by president Etienne de Swardt.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Etat Libre d'Orange Fils de Dieu du Riz et des Agrumes: fragrance review

Despite allusions to Messianic status and references to a Far Asian dish full of endemic ingredients, Fils de Dieu is neither incense-based, nor is it foody in smell. Instead it shoots clarity, modernity and prized complexity into an age-old structure, the classic oriental perfume, making it shed its abundant sunshine like a golden ray shimmering onto yellow butterflies flying over the spring blooms in the balcony. Forget the controversy factor and scare-the-horses impact of the niche brand's infamous Sécrétions Magnifiques. This one is instantly (and easily) likeable stuff you will get serious milleage off; which I'd think defeats the brand's "perfume is dead, long live perfume" manifesto, but there you have it: they need to make wearable stuff too I suppose. Fils de Dieu is among their most approachable. 

Biko rice cupcakes from the Philippines
Etat Libre d'Orange describes its latest fragrance Fils de Dieu du Riz et des Agrumes (its full name meaning “Son of God of rice and citrus”) as "the one who brings on the light, the sunshine", drawing from the Philippines lore (its alternative name was Philippine Houseboy). Perfumer Ralf Schwieger (of Lipstick Rose fame), set to task by the brand's head Etienne De Swardt, took the basic structure of a classical oriental built on tart citrus and creamy ambery and vanillic notes (see Shalimar or even better the more legible Shalimar Light) and renovated it into a modern creation that registers as totally urban, totally effarvescent, totally wearable. But that's not to mean it wears thin or minimalist: the projection of the mouilletes on my library is reaching me, diffusing with gusto, in the bedroom and the sillage trailing off my chiffon blouse is enough to entice the neighbour meeting me round the corner to ask what I am wearing. "It's Fils de Dieu", I reply rather self-consious. "Oooh, sounds like one of those delectable things only you carry around here!" she replies with a resigned sigh. I oblige and write the name down along with intrstructions on where to get some.

That is the effect the new Etat Libre d'Orange fragrance has: uplifting, inviting, alluring, radiant. Despite the lack of heft its vanilla background has (forget thick, "burnt" too foody vanillas, this is nuanced and sophisticated), the tenacity of musk, the crushed flower petals and the profusion of leathery castoreum (reminiscent of a FarEast massage parlour) accounts for a composition that will get you noticed throughout the day. If the equally inviting Etat Libre d'Orange Archives 69 and their universally liked Like This is any indication, the French brand is following a certain kind of compositions quite purposefully lately. 

But the interesting thing about Fils de Dieu is the masterful playing of contrast and the injection of herbal into the classic oriental motif: the ginger (in itself having a citrusy facet) pairs with other hesperidic notes, notably sharp lime, starting with bracing, mouthwatering freshness (not unlike the bergamot-rich head note of Cologne Bigarade in the F.Malle line). There's the subtle and brief fennel-like note of shiso and then the perfume swims confidently into plush comfort through the milky-rice note of coconut-milk steamed rice. The zen-like effect of savoury rice cooking on the stove was perhaps most famously explored by niche brand Ormonde Jayne in Champaca: there's something home-bound and soothing about that smell and Linda Pilkington had revealed to me in an interview that she had envisioned it inspired by her Chinese neighbours cooking rice at their appartment every evening. Etat Libre had injected a rice note as a hint in their previous Putain de Palaces. But in Fils de Dieu the progression melds effortlessly into an intimate, gourmand aftertaste with lots of coriander (orange-saffron like, almost), a metallic nuance and suede, sultry leathery notes which retain the fragrance deliciously on both skin and cloth.


Etat Libre d'Orange Fils de Dieu, du Riz et des Agrumes is available from Henri Bendels, MiN New York and online from Luckyscent and Les Senteurs.


Notes for Etat Libre d'Orange Fils de Dieu:
Ginger, coriander leaves, lime, shiso, bergamot, Jungle Essence coconut, rice note, Jungle Essence cardamom, jasmine, cinnamon, French May rose, tonka bean, vetiver, musk, amber, leather, castoreum.

photo via cupcakeproject.com

Friday, August 26, 2011

Etat Libre d'Orange Archives 69: fragrance review & draw

The releases by pop-art fragrance phenomenon État Libre d'Orange ever since Like This (fronted by Tilda Swinton) have been lacking, belying the enthusiasm on discovering credible and artful compositions behind rather gimmicky names. Simply put, they are not at all challenging or unique as I've come to expect from the ground-breaking house. Archives 69, named after the address of the brand in Paris (69 rue des Archives) but at the same time deliciously hinting at the racy sexual position through the iconography on the site, doesn't deviate from this disappointing path. It's not that it is not pleasant or wearable (because it certainly is), it is that it is rather contrived given the history: sampling their scents is like blind-foldingly tasting Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.

The ad copy, promising "the illusion of sex", certainly makes for a frenzied anticipation among the perfume buying audience: "[...]when she finds you, you will know the end of innocence. With the song of a siren, she lures you with an indecent charm, an almost malevolent delicacy. She sings to the animal in you. She awakens the sleeping lion, she tames the savage beast. She leads you to wondrous and frightening delights, and you may be surprised by the strength of her seduction. She is masculine/feminine, succubus and incubus, and she can be dangerous, but only to those who willingly resist the confines of safety. You will shudder at the urgency of her will, and tremble at your hungry response". Eh, riiiight.

Upon spraying Archives 69 from État Libre d'Orange there is a smidge of that nauseating, sterile note (supposedly a nitrile) that makes crétions Magnifiques so vile for so many. Allied to a musky note, midway between clean and dirty, it soon dissipates (blink and you'll miss it), paving the way for a much smoother, crowd-pleasing warm, spicy woody cluster of notes with overripe fruity nuances, reminiscent of the accord in Like This; plus warm, fuzzy fur. But not that kind of fur! It's more of a piney incense trail on a furry animal that cozed up by the fire, with spicy accents and the hint of dirt in good patchouli. There is a sweetness to its animalic fuzziness, a little bit salty sweet from one angle, more creamy sweet from another. But it never deviates from its mould of oriental spicy.

The composition overall is much too tame to conjure images of depravity and Baudelairian debauchery, but that does not mean that lovers (men or women) of snuggly, warm, skin scents won't like it. On the contrary.
To capture the full effect it's best to spray, since dabbing is akin to putting on sourdine on it; in that regard I agree with what Gaia of the Non Blonde points out. Still, in anycase and any way of wearing it, it's a low-hum fragrance that needs the proximity of intimacy to be best detected, much like other woody muskies such as Gaiac 10 by Le Labo or Escentric 01 (Escentric Molecules).

Notes for Etat Libre d'Orange Archives 69:
Mandarin, pink pepper CO2, pimento leaf, orchid Jungle Essence®and prune Jungle Essence®, incense, camphor, benjoin, patchouli, musk.

A sample out of my personal stash is available for a lucky reader. Please respond to this question to be eligible: Do you equate spicy, woody, snuggly scents with the autumn & holiday season or are you panseasonal? (And do you have a favourite among them?)

Archives 69 by État Libre d'Orange is available in 50ml and 100ml Eau de Parfum. The 100ml bottle is a limited edition in a collectible box. Archives 69 can be purchased from Escentual.com in UK and Henri Bendels and Luckyscent in the USA.


Still from the film Last Tango in Paris, photo of presentation from Elements Showcase NYC exhibition

Monday, November 1, 2010

Etat Libre d'Orange Secretions Magnifiques: fragrance review


I'm in the attic of an old video store downtown. Stuffy and with the permeating smell of hot, new plastic from the inner jackets of DVDs with questionable material. The seedy sales assistant is dressed and "groomed" like Ian Lamont in the disastrous remake of The Jackal, only he utterly lacks any charm Jack Black naturally possesses. He's oggling female customers with a roving eye, but it is actually the shy, low-browed "help" with the upstraight collar that is really a sexual offender. That attic smells of dried up semen and surreptitious impositions on unwilling females, of threat and defilement, of a sense of panic where your trachea closes as if you can't breath and no voice can come out...no matter how many primary colours change hues beneath your shut eyelids.

I'm in the operating theatre of a hospital, lying supine and cold. The ceiling above me has the listless greyish white of ashes in a crematorium and I feel like I should belong in one. Lochia is oozing off me, the burden of having my guts torn out, hatched job of 20 weeks when the air was still pregnant with hope. There are no salty tears falling off to the edge of the ears making the familiar plonk sound, only the buzz of the fluorescent lights atop. Nothing moves save the mops across the corridors spreading another layer of bleach on the floors.

I'm in a small African camp where Action Aid is volunteering. A teenage mother of no more than 13 is sitting back up the wall of a thatched cottage, as the weather is taking a turn for the damper, her baby infested by a thousand flies, in the same position as it last had grabbed her breast in an attempt to draw life-sustaining liquid. Liquid which trickles down still under her expresionless face, stale, and mixed with sweat and the scent of famine; whitish liquid on black skin, so agile, so puerile, you think you could take this mother and lull her to sleep herself.

Sécrétions Magnifiques rather amazingly smells like all of these places. I just don't want to be in those places...ever.

Definitely out of the Guy Robert perimeter of perfumery standards ("perfume should smell good") and into avant-garde in earnest, this is a fragrance that acts like Duchamp's Fountain (Urinal); it serves as a springboard for discussion more than an art piece to put and enjoy in someone's home. Smelling aquatic-metallic with an algae note and a lot like sweet floral notes and coconut blanched in bleach (featuring Azurone, a Givaudan trademarked "clean" note), with a spattering of spoiled condensed milk and pure bile in the mix as it "opens up", Sécrétions Magnifiques by État Libre d'Orange is a scent not to leave anyone indifferent and is both totally original and undoubtedly a technical feat (the demonic notes reverberate into eternity opening up with gusto). Supposedly it's trying to replicate scents of saliva, milk, blood and semen, these magnificent secretions for which humans are known (if you were hoping for Eau de Merveilles though, forget it) but there is absolutely no animal hint or human intimacy, rather a sterile Alien accord that is a study on every female fear.
Its perfumer, Antoine Lie, has been known for his work at Comme Des Garcons (888, Lime and Grapefruit from the Energy C series, Wonderwood as well as Daphne), as well as others in the État Libre line (Tom of Finland, Rien, Divin Enfant, Je Suis un Homme, Don't get me wrong baby). Sécrétions Magnifiques by État Libre d'Orange is available as Eau de Parfum. Its fame precedes this bête noire; approach with a sense of respect.

Notes given for Sécrétions Magnifiques:
Iode accord, adrenaline accord, blood accord, milk accord, iris, coconut, sandalwood and opoponax.

For a funnier take with less drama, watch Katie's review on Youtube.

pic originally uploaded on mua by mzterrim sent to me by email

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Etat Libre d'Orange Sex Pistols: Cultural Anatomy of a New Fragrance

Two new fragrances are getting issued from French-based brand extraordinaire Etat Libre d'Orange this coming autumn 2010. News had leaked at the beginning of the year, but now it is officially confirmed. And the first of them demands its own dissection since it hinges on several cultural axes and one relating the political with the "scentsical"; always within the scope of Perfume Shrine.

Le Parfum Sex Pistols, the brainchild of Etienne De Swardt, the owner of the infamous niche brand is "the scent of anarchy and rebellion worn to bring out your inner punk". Etat Libre d'Orange despite their French roots seems hell-bent on bringing out the most influential of the British: what with their collaboration with Tilda Swinton for Like This recently and now with the Sex Pistols, the revolutionary punk-rock band of the late 1970s whose motto was "We are not into music, we are into CHAOS". All too brief (just 2,5 years of presence and one LP album) and they're still being discussed, nevertheless. Not least because of the legend of "doomed youth" of its tragic man Sid Vicious (his name ironically taken off Johnny Rotten's pet hamster), dead at 21 after a heroine overdose following the accusations of doing his girlfriend in while on a drug-induced high.


The coincidental timing wanted the new fragrance to be scheduled right after impresario Malcom McLaren's death, the man who proclaimed he "used people like clay, like a sculptor would" in order to make the Sex Pistols, initially a subcultural manifestation aided by his lover fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, his very own anti-establishment art project, taking full credit years after the band's splitting for creating the social and cultural phenomenon. To wit, watch the Great Rock n'Roll Swindle. Yet critic Greil Marcus reflected on McLaren's contradictory posture: "It may be that in the mind of their self-celebrated Svengali...the Sex Pistols were never meant to be more than a nine-month wonder, a cheap vehicle for some fast money, a few laughs, a touch of the old épater la bourgeoisie. It may also be that in the mind of their chief terrorist and propagandist, anarchist veteran...and Situational artist McLaren, the Sex Pistols were meant to be a force that would set the world on its ear...and finally unite music and politics. The Sex Pistols were all of these things" [quoted: Hatch, David, and Stephen Millward, From Blues to Rock, p. 170]. Of course the underlying chasm between McLaren and charismatic (and intelligent) Johny Lydon -or "Rotten" as he was widely known "thanks" to his early-70s-British-teeth; the lads sport pearly whites now- makes the auteur's ambition on McLaren's part rather ambiguous. The political agenda was inchoate, the effectuation of change not really solid in anyone's mind, the identification with the working classes not really there [Campbell, Sean, "Sounding Out the Margins", pp. 127–130.]
If it had been any other perfume brand, I would have talked about spoliation... Yet something about Etat Libre makes the most unlikely projects seem acceptable! After all they did a scent after homoerotic sex artist Tom of Findland. And another one called Fat Electrician, sporting the (predictable) dawn of a butt-crack on the advertising images. McLaren himself had stated "[Punk's] authenticity stands out against the karaoke ersatz culture of today, where everything and everyone is for sale.... [P]unk is not, and never was, for sale." Then again, there is a lot of "watering the wine" with the passing of years, as even the mouthpiece of the band capitulated to commercialization. All right, it was to fund the reunion of his PiL group because Virgin Records (who had the Pistols signed) refused to sign them, but still...it looks incongruent. And nowadays when the international economic crisis is sending off people into their own little conservative cocoon, how does a conceptual project materialize in a product?

Also related is that De Swardt has "set up a new company, Editions des Sens, to create fragrances which are a little less niche and have a slightly wider market appeal". [source] A reverse concept of "editions" for a wider audience rather than more limited, the way it was back when Malle introduced his own. It's interesting to contemplate in the greater scheme of things.
The unisex juice for Le Parfum Sex Pistols by Etat Libre D'Orange was created by Mathilde Bijaoui from Mane and opens with lemon, grey pepper and ambrette notes. The heart has black plum, aldehydes and heliotrope, drying down to patchouli, orcanox and leather at the base. Luckily not the vomit note of warm beer consumed in punk concerts...we've been spared.
Anyway, the perfume hits international stores in September. Never mind the rest, here comes Le Parfum Sex Pistols!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Etat Libre d'Orange Like This Tilda Swinton: Musing on a Muse

Etat Libre d’Orange, the brand of interesting scents and provocative names, takes on another unusual muse; after Rossy de Palma, the cubist-looking Spanish actress renowned for her work in Almodovar films, the visually striking and fiercely talented Tilda Swinton is their next "muse". The enigmatic, ambiguous, eternally pale and socially provocative actress (living a polyamorous existence in Scotland) broke into the scene with Virgina Woolf's Orlando film adaptation in 1992 never to divert far from our attention span ever again. Even though Tilda is not exactly beautiful (or pretty, in the conventional sense of big eyes, round contours, flowing mane) she is arresting and compelling to watch, making the camera love her. Etat Libre d’Orange dedicates their latest fragrance, inspired by the verse of the Persian poet of the 13th century Rumi and named Like This to Tilda Swinton, rendering the most unexpected "celebrity scent" in a long while. Perhaps the choice wasn't really that unexpected: Several perfume enthusiasts in the online community when asked which celebrity should have their own fragrance mention her name, adding that Etat Libre would do her justice (that remains to be seen, but I am willing to test the theory out!)

So what is it with unusual, non silicone-friendly beauties that could be termed jolie-laide lately? We had noticed the phenomenon when Balenciaga had chosen Charlotte Gainsbourg a while ago for their new violet-laced steely scent Balenciaga Paris. Even though Charlotte, Gainsbourg's daughter by Jane Birkin, has known controversy since infancy (Lemon Incest is a hard act to follow!), somehow her contemporary profile minus Antichrist is rather tame. Her family life, married to director Yvon Attal, is steady, even bourgeois. Tilda on the other hand enjoys a much more controversial profile, a patrician background and her Celtic features and high colouring are unpredictable and more distinctive than Charlotte's. The White Witch part in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) was plenty memorable.

What is more interesting is that there seems to exist a brave new frontier in fronting fragrances through faces that communicate a certain intelligence (Tilda has been involved in installation art and cutting-edge fashion, notably for Victor & Rolf) and visual bravado. The audience has been tired of mainstream predictability and needs new "flesh". Is it also an indication of feministic streak that re-awakens through a bras-de-fer with the cemented ideals of Hollywood-esque attractiveness? Tilda is a creature of subtle and underground sexuality, which highlights the mystique that fragrance can inspire admirably. And perhaps the female buyers of fragrance long for it to be again -after decades when it was forgotten- a discreet game of mapping their own identity, intelligently and cohesively. In the words of Tilda herself: "I'm basically interested in identity, and I still find fascinating the question, 'How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?' "

Like This was composed by perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui, including notes of yellow mandarin, ginger, helicrysum (everlasting flower/immortelle), neroli, Grasse rose de Mai, heliotrope, musk and vetiver, as well as the new synthetic Potiron Jungle Essence (Mane laboratories) reinforcing the smell of pumpkin. The word pumkin ~alongside its echolalia and the findings of Dr.Hirsch about its scent augmenting penile blood flow~ makes me giggle a bit when contemplating the polyamorous environment of Tilda. Is this intentional? It would be fun to think that it were!

Like This by Etat Libre d’Orange will be available in Eau de Parfum 50ml and is launching on 13th March 2010.
Photo of Tilda Swinton via papercastlepress.com/blog

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