I have been playing and flirting with the innuendo and olfactive subversion of Etat Libre d’Orange for so long, I cannot imagine my skin or foxy study without their distinctive square cut, target-blazoned flacons. The styrax-soaked Molotov reek of Rien was my first, then Jasmin et Cigarette, then Les Sécretions Magnifiques with its bilge and saline sex bloom, Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection, the bloody metallic rose which I adore, Tom of Finland, still one of the finest, most erotic leathers in production. I paused for a while then added L’Après Midi d’Un Faun and Fils de Dieu, both by the masterly hand of Ralf Schwieger, naughty Noël au Balcon and most recently the beautifully odd Le Fin du Monde by Quentin Bisch, a contemplative buttered popcorn and cordite take on the end of the world. It is an iconoclastic, porny house, the Etat motto ‘Le Parfum est Mort! Vive le Parfum!’ is both provocation and cynical wink.
Etienne de Swardt and Mathilde Bijaoui (Fragrance Foundation Award winning LikeThis and she also composed Bijou Romantique)
Creative Director Etienne de Swardt views himself as an editor of these varied, tumbling aromas. He has worked, as he wrote in CaFleureBon Creative Directors in Perfumery with a variety of noses to establish an erogenous and socio-political assemblage of giddy scent making including Antoine Lie, Ralf Schwieger, Natalie Feisthauer, Christine Nagel, Mathilde Bijaoui, and Antoine Maisondieu. Recently the house has played things more obliquely. The last trio of releases have all been defiantly unexpected, a nice cologne, a ramped up flanker and a collision of two previous releases. Indolence or provocation? I’m not sure Etienne & Co gives a hoot what we really think, but it’s an interesting if bizarre sideways move. My thoughts on the Cologne are muted, despite a very well held and zingy orange note in the top that is beautiful. The world does not really need ironic cologne. Rien Intense Incense is a deliberate attempt to smoke oud out of the scented game. Never gonna happen. The #oudispassé hashtag is catchy but not quite enough to salvage an enormous roaring blast of scorched styrax, barely held in check by battered spices and one of the driest incense effects I’ve in a while. It’s the scented equivalent to the 50s desert atom bomb blasts…searing radial force. If I had never worn the original Rien, I think I might have perhaps experienced this cacophony of burn in a different way. It has HUGE sillage and linger, sticking to skin with massive rubbered darkness.
True Lust, Rayon Violet De Ses Yeux is in modern parlance a mash up of Dangerous Complicity by Violaine Collas (2012) and Putain de Palaces by Nathalie Feisthauer (2006), the two fragrances collided together to create an erotic powdered and rather disturbing hybrid. To be honest, I’m not sure if it works, but the complexities of the rendezvous in endless dimly lit slutty olfactive rooms make the experience well worth trying.
Michelle Reis and Takeshi Keneshiro
Dangerous Complicity is that magnificent final scent from Wong Kar Wai’s 1995 film Fallen Angels as Michelle Reis clings to the gorgeously enigmatic Takeshi Keneshiro on the back on his back, weaving lushly through a neon-lit, smoke drenched streetscape. Lipstick, powder, melancholy, leather and mingled histories of love.
. Photo collage: Miles Aldridge
Putain de Palaces is the Miles Aldridge woman, glossy, geisha-doll and porno-chic, lolling in endless slick rooms. It’s a strange idea to smear the two together; according to the Etat Libre d’Orange PR stuff …’what emerges from this satanic union of temptation and danger, jeopardy and passion, is a sweet and shocking folly.’ Typically OTT stuff and not quite fair to the rather lovely explosion of lipstick stained pencil-shavings and tea-drenched osmanthus notes that opens the mix. The rummy ginger aura that comes from Dangerous Complicity lies over the retro boudoir scent of Natalie Feisthauer’s rice powder note she generously dusted through Putain’s masked and sensual formulation. Both scents echo lipstick accords in a lovely blur of violet and blushing rose.
Miles Aldridge
True Lust uses a milky coconut effect like a binding agent to pull the elements together and sweeten the rising animalic tones of the base. A quiet ylang note and that clear peachy osmanthus add a further layer of complexity to proceedings, allowing the echoes of the two original scents to merge a little uncomfortably and overtly at times into blatant erotic grooves. But I think this can be forgiven as the gauzy experimentation and crimson pull of the merger is so intriguing to wear.
Disclosure – Samples kindly provided by Etat Libre d’Orange
–The Silver Fox, Sr Editor and Editor of The Silver Fox
Editor’s Note: If you live in the USA you can buy True Lust at Twisted Lily
Thanks to Etienne de Swardt and Etat Libre D’Orange we have 100ml of True Lust for any reader worldwide.To be eligible, please leave a comment with what appeals to you about True Lust, Rayon Violet De Ses Yeux, your favorite Etat Libre D’Orange perfume and where you live. Draw closes February 3, 2015
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