Etat Libre d’Orange Putain des Palaces ~ perfume review

Posted by Angela on 12 August 2013 62 Comments

Etat Libre d'Orange Putain des Palaces flacon & box

Let’s get this over with quickly so we can move on the fragrance itself: Yes, Etat Libre d’Orange Putain des Palaces’s English translation — as supplied by Etat Libre, at least — is “Hotel Slut.” And, yes, its logo (see below) is a phallic key inserted into a pink, ovoid lock. All right, we’ve got it, ha ha ha.

But “Hotel Slut” casts the wrong impression of the perfume. It sounds too cheap. After rejecting Truck Stop Floozy (not tony enough) and Penthouse Suite Slattern (really I just listed this name for the chance to use “slattern”), I think High Class Harlot is more like it.

Putain des Palaces was released in 2006 and was developed by perfumer Nathalie Feisthauer. Its notes include rose absolute, violet, leather, lily of the valley, tangerine, ginger, rice powder, amber and animal notes. For once, the list of notes is a good representation of the actual fragrance.

Putain des Palaces is an aldehydic floral juiced with ginger-spiked citrus and sandwiched between a whiff of body odor and a bed of supple stiletto leather…

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Be a slut or just smell like one

Posted by Robin on 3 July 2013 13 Comments

Niche line Etat Libre d'Orange opens a store in London. 4 minutes long, you'll probably get the gist after a minute or so.

Etat Libre d’Orange The Afternoon of a Faun ~ fragrance review

Posted by Kevin on 20 February 2013 25 Comments

faune

As usual, Etat Libre d’Orange loads its newish release, The Afternoon of a Faun, with lots of backstory: Stéphane Mérimée’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune, Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet (nymphs! sex!), and…uh…Mx* Justin Vivian Bond, who is given equal credit (and ad space) for developing the fragrance with perfumer Ralf Schwieger. (I can’t believe Ralf is pleased.) There’s a world of difference between Nijinsky’s The Afternoon of a Faun and Bond’s…Shortbus (though I can’t believe Etat Libre d’Orange didn’t try for a perfume tie-in with that film); when Nijinsky is “present,” even in a still photograph or grainy film clip, everyone else pales.

The Afternoon of a Faun perfume goes on “liquor-y” — with rich citrus, a touch of jasmine, and lots of immortelle. Out of that initial triad, immortelle is heaviest and longer lasting; it dominates the next phase of development too, but in mid-development it’s augmented with whiffs of rosy incense. In its final phase, The Afternoon of a Faun presents sweet, woody myrrh accented with pepper; its base notes have a waxy sheen, as if the lingering immortelle had been dipped in beeswax…

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Etat Libre d’Orange Je suis un homme ~ fragrance review

Posted by Kevin on 23 January 2013 37 Comments

Etat Libre d'Orange Je suis un homme

Over the holidays spent at home, I found myself wearing LOTS of perfumes — named Chanel No. 5, Jean Patou Joy and Dior Diorissimo (vintage, both), Molinard Habanita and Lalique de Lalique. All of a sudden, I felt I needed to stop shaving, to put on some work boots, and to wear a manly cologne — nothing fancy, but a salt-of-the-earth, dare I say, conservative fragrance. I reached for Etat Libre d’Orange Je suis un homme.*

I tried Je suis un homme years ago; it was like-at-first-sniff. And what’s NOT to like? Though its emblem is a penis-barreled gun, Je suis un homme is a comforting scent to me…not menacing in the least. Je suis un homme is masculine, warm and fuzzy; it’s sexy, but I don’t like to write the word ‘sexy’ in connection with a gun (Etat Libre d’Orange: retire the penis-pistol…if you want another penis besides the spurting one used in the Sécrétions Magnifiques ad copy, make it less aggressive, maybe zero in on the naked crotch of an ancient Greek or Roman sculpture?)

Je suis un homme’s opening is bracing…

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Top 10 Fall Fragrances 2012

Posted by Erin on 5 October 2012 154 Comments

gourds and a mushroom

I have been known to change my mind. Still, as far as my love of autumnal perfumes goes, it seems I am as constant as the northern star. I kept thinking of fragrances to include in this post and then realizing, blast, I’d already listed them the last time I covered fall favorites for Now Smell This in 2009. A few of the previous ten are my all-time, all-year darlings, but the fall always casts them in a particularly poignant and profound light for me. As October starts, I often think of lines from John Cheever: “and who, after all these centuries, can describe the fineness of an autumn day?” (via The Stories of John Cheever). He gives it a shot anyway:

The clear and searching sweep of sun on the lawns was like a climax of the year’s lights. Leaves were burning somewhere, and the smoke smelled, with all its ammoniac acidity, of beginnings. The boundless blue air was stretched over the zenith like the skin of a drum.

That ammoniac acidity has always given me pause — ammonia is alkaline, isn’t it? — but the sky and the sun and the lawns are all perfectly right. And then, using his characteristic contrast of the ecstatic and the everyday, he deflates that golden description with: “It was the day to canvass for infectious hepatitis.” Well, of course it was! For autumn is not only the season of reflection and melancholy, a time to moon about in cable-knit sweaters through the mists of the dying year. It is also a practical season, a time to make school lunches and Halloween costumes, to bustle along the sidewalks through gusty breezes on charitable errands. As Cheever wrote, beginnings are in the air.

So okay, you say… begin already, please! As I rounded up the usual suspects three years ago, the following list includes some of my favorite newer scents. (Surely my “Best of 2012” picks will be predictable enough to excuse a spoiler.) There are a few of my old standbys that got missed last time, too…

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