On January 5, 1978 I was in Atlanta at the Great Southeastern Music Hall, the club was packed. Kids in ripped t-shirts with safety pins, press wearing blazers, and the curious were all out in force. The Sex Pistols were playing their first US show. By the time they would finish the tour in San Francisco the band would be done forever. The Sex Pistols were the band that introduced us to Punk and they were unapologetically rock and roll in every way. The Pistols took no prisoners and when I listen to my bootleg recording of that night I hear a band on the verge of spinning out of control and not afraid to show it. Thirty-two years later Etat Libre D’Orange is trying to capture The Sex Pistols in a fragrance and I didn’t know what to expect but I did have expectations.

If you were going to ask me to name a fragrance house to try and assay a fragrance based on The Sex Pistols, Etat Libre D’Orange would be one of the houses on a very short list as one that might be able to do it justice. In many ways they might be the only house that could even attempt to do this. From the outre’ Secretions Magnifique through to their quirky celebuscents exemplified by the Tilda Swinton inspired Like This; Etat Libre D’Orange have been unafraid to march to their own beat. Back to those expectations I had, what would I want The Sex Pistols to smell like? If I wanted it to be true to life it should smell like dirty sweat stained t-shirts, stale beer and cigarettes. That would be true to life but not pleasant to be sure. If I wanted it to be true to The Sex Pistols and the Punk movement, the fragrance should be unusual and unlike anything else out there; a unique chapter in fragrances. In either case those expectations were the baggage I was carrying as I received my sample of The Sex Pistols.

Mathilde Bijaoui was the perfumer tapped to create The Sex Pistols and she chose a different path from either of my expectations. Mme. Bijaoui does not go for realism although there is some aspect of the fragrant milieu of the Punk movement. Nor does she try to make some amazingly ground-breaking piece of fragrance although The Sex Pistols does not smell like a lot of other things out there. Those expectations of mine made me have to wear this over and over before I could effectively let go of my pre-conceptions and finally begin to assess The Sex Pistols on its own merits.

Mme. Bijaoui chooses to open The Sex Pistols with a strong ambrette which imparts an almost enclosed space feel to the early going. According to the note list lemon and grey pepper are also supposed to be present but on my skin it is the ambrette almost exclusively that comes through. The heart is a mix of deep plum and aldehydes and this has the quality of imparting a dark fruity core with edgy facets courtesy of the aldehydes. Here is where I might have wished for Mme. Bijaoui to create some more of an edge with a strongly spicy note. There is a part of me that really wants a slug of cumin and its sweaty quality present but Mme. Bijaoui has different ideas and The Sex Pistols feels almost pretty at the mid-point of its development. Leather and patchouli add the finishing touches to The Sex Pistols and again I wanted a rawer leather as in another Etat Libre D’Orange fragrance Vierges et Toreros and patchouli didn’t feel right. As in the heart the base comes off more gentle than I would’ve expected.

The Sex Pistols has excellent longevity and average sillage.

If this fragrance was named almost anything else I think I’d be raving about it as Mme. Bijaoui has created a dark fruity leather that is really quite pretty. But there are those darn expectations of a scent named The Sex Pistols and what that fragrance should be and this fragrance doesn’t feel realistic enough or edgy enough to be carrying The Sex Pistols on the label.  In the end I was left feeling like The Sex Pistols the fragrance should be singing the lyrics to The Sex Pistols' “Pretty Vacant”

We’re Pretty

A Pretty Vacant

And we don’t care!

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample from Etat Libre D’Orange and a sample purchased from The Perfumed Court.

Photos are from Wikimedia Commons

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor