Who goes beside you into the forest on the darkest night ? In Victor Hugo’s poem, « À quoi songeaient les deux cavaliers dans la forêt », (What Two Horsemen Were Thinking in the Forest), the narrator says “ by my side, Hermann seemed to me like a shadow. ”

We all have shadows, even at night in the dark forest. You may call yours by another name : your invisible friend. Your conscience, your soul, maybe even your complementary ego. Your shadow could have a name, like Hermann. Or your shadow could be your perfume. This is your companion. You can argue with your companion, you can challenge your companion, you can test the boundaries of your own attitudes. You can debate the finer points of existence. But you cannot lose this companion, not ever. This is your alternative self. As you move through life and contemplate its meaning, you ask unanswerable questions. When you’re overwhelmed with uncertainties, look to your shadow. Maybe you’ll get a response. Maybe not. But at least you’ll have an interesting conversation.

Blackcurrant buds, black pepper, galbanum, calypsone, geosmin, frankincense, pepperwood, petalia, rose absolute, patchouli, ambroxan

Remarkable People.
You know who you are.
For every epoch, for every era, there are remarkable people.
In classical mythologies, there were the demigods, the offspring of a god and a human, or a mortal who was raised to divine status. An ancient Greek poet used the word demigod as a synonym for hero. They demonstrated strength and power, a willingness to face challenges and confront danger. In the New World, there were the explorers, who discovered unknown lands. They were heroes too, battling forces of nature to find new territories. And throughout history - scientists, artists, composers, entertainers - all heroes in their own way. New heroes are born every day. There is an element, or an event, or a circumstance, or maybe just a quirk in their personalities that changes them, empowers them, enables them to transcend the ordinary. They believe in something different, something better. They want to change the rules, break the rules, alter the status quo, in whatever grand or small way they find meaningful. They are on a journey, and maybe it’s the effort alone that makes them remarkable. For some, their efforts bring fame and glory. Many others remain unknown. But they cannot - they should not - be ignored. These are our people - the remarkable citizens of Etat Libre d’Orange, the Orange Free State. The “un” people - uncompromising, unexpected, unconventional, unpredictable. We salute them, we honor them, by offering the extraordinary fragrance they deserve.

Grapefruit, champagne accord, cardamom, jasmine, curry JE, black pepper, labdanum, sandalwood, lorenox

THE MOST WANTED SCENT MADE FROM THE UNWANTED

Les Fleurs du Déchet represents a passage to the adulthood of Sécrétions Magnifiques. It is a counter-revolution for Etat Libre d’Orange, still noisy and disruptive, but ultimately functional.

Givaudan, Ogilvy and Etat Libre d’Orange have created a three-fold company in the service of Mother Nature, to offer her a bouquet of forgiveness and let everyone know – loudly and quickly – that soon it will be too late.

Dear world: Do not throw anything away because at the bottom of our trash lies the fermented distillation of great love. The garbage trucks hold flowers that can still bleed, the peels and rinds that can still give. The noxious exhalations have honey notes that can merge with the earth. And there are so many floating concretions, the trash that is thrown into the sea, and the natural waste, the ambergris, mystical symbols, the attitudes of primitive tribes – these must now be reprocessed.

To paraphrase and distort Alan Paton: Cry, my beloved planet, for the unborn child; let him not love the earth too deeply, for it is slipping away.

So before it’s too late, let us (s)pray to the god of waste, our dear lord of leftovers.

End of sermon. This is a messianic fragrance (in natural spray, of course.)

— Etienne de Swardt

Apple Essence Upcycling, Rose Absolute Upcycling, Cedarwood Atlas Upcycling, Bitter Orange, Gariguette Strawberry

"It should be clear that You Or Someone Like You is not some kind of olfactory landscape painting. Anne is a serious gardener — I wrote a trellis of roses into her garden, I wrote in mint and wild grasses though the individual raw materials are in the end irrelevant. What You is is whatever you find it is. A scent you transplant to yourself. Synthetic and natural beauty. Possibility." 

— Chandler Burr

Los Angeles. In this, the city of fallen angels, fantasy rules.

In On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote, “LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.” It’s the city described by Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall as the city where “the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.”

But they come, the dreamers, for the sunshine and the possibilities, to this land of opportunity, where hope springs eternal. Whatever they’re searching for — happiness, love, money, fame — the temptations lure them deeper and deeper into this concrete paradise.

Does Los Angeles have a scent? It’s impossible to say. But Chandler Burr knows Los Angeles. And Chandler Burr knows perfume. So we decided to collaborate on a fragrance that an LA woman might wear. And we gave it the name of Chandler’s novel, set in Los Angeles.

And you dreamers, with your dreams — you might flourish, you might wither, but you don’t give up. You keep coming, or you think about coming, and sometimes you stay.

Because someday, someone just might be looking for you, pointing at you, wanting you. Or someone like you.

“A few years ago I wrote a novel called You Or Someone Like You set in Los Angeles. Its central character is a woman, Anne Rosenbaum, who lives in the Hollywood Hills with her husband, Howard, a movie studio executive. Like so many of the homes up the fantastical curves and canyons of the Hills they look down on LA’s Downtown skyscrapers and the concrete ribbon of the 101 freeway, across Mid-Wilshire and Robertson, the glass towers of Century City, and, on clear days, over the 405 to Santa Monica and the placid, blue Pacific. And always the palm trees, imported and planted in LA in the early 20^th century, ‘just as I am an import,’ Anne observes, ‘now indigenous.’ Anne is English, born in Hammermith, London.

“As many have observed, Los Angeles is not a city. It is a state of mind. A strange amalgam of places and languages. Los Angeles is rivers of cement highways and infinite strips of asphalt, traffic, and despite or because of it all one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places on earth, a natural beauty made by nature and molded by people, cobalt sky and the greens and tans of the desert parks, ocean fog, the white and delicate pale yellow jasmine and honeysuckle flowers that grow up parking signs reading ‘Permit Parking Only Violators Will Be Towed.’

“This scent is very specific. When Etienne de Swardt approached me about creative directing a fragrance whose name would be the title of my novel, I told my perfumer, Caroline Sabas, that we were creating the fragrance Anne would wear. She is also very specific. Coolly crisply English, covered in but untouched by the silver, materialistic movie industry, literary, somewhat removed.

“You Or Someone Like You is not the ‘scent of LA’ or ‘the smell of the Hollywood Hills captured.’ It is not one of those olfactory synecdoches. It is, on the other hand, stylistically and in its technical construction what a Los Angeles woman would wear in my view. Caroline and I discussed this at each step during the creation process. It is contemporary, 21^st century. It is LA, whatever that means, though in part it means the norms a scent would follow in a meeting at one of the agencies near Wilshire, at a studio, at a lunch in Bel Air or dinner off Beverly Drive. (The raw materials are completely irrelevant. The work is the work. If you need to know what it’s made of, don’t wear it; You is not for you.)

“My fictional Anne wears it; so presumably do thousands of other women. It represents her only in the way all such choices represent us. What it will be to you is for you to decide, obviously.”

— Chandler Burr

You or Someone Like You is a welcoming fragrance: neither off-putting nor strange. It is a contemporary creation built around timeless materials.

It embodies the women of LA — someone like Anne Rosenbaum: cool and crisp; once foreign but now indigenous; very exposed to Hollywood’s silver screen dreams yet untouched by its materialistic machinery. Anne finds comfort in literature, and the garden of her home, which nestles in the hills overlooking downtown LA.

The scent represents her only in the way all such choices represent us. It can be concrete, like a beautiful green rose. Yet, it can be abstract, just like an Erik Satie composition for it is a puzzle so mysterious that it is difficult to unravel.

The perfume invigorates the senses with its fresh, inviting appeal. One feels good wearing it.

— the Perfumer 

Fresh

His beauty would have been his greatest asset. One imagines he was raised in the big air of Texas, his soft skin scrubbed by ears of wheat, his eyelashes curled by grappling with grace against a blinding sun. A Midnight Cowboy lost on city asphalt.

A fisherman without a line, he was made to be hooked by others, to believe in his fate without knowing it, to wreak havoc and forget it over time. Youth for women-of-a-certain-age, stock for late-night parties, a partner to accompany the wealthy of Palm Beach on nature walks, his splendor is consumed in the service of others. Now, a Fat Electrician in New Jersey, his talent depleted in his sexual decline. This is the curse of beauty - it doesn’t last.

Vetiver from Haiti, chestnut cream, olive leaves, myrrh, vanilla, opoponax

IS IT A PASSING FANCY, A MOMENTARY CATCHING-OF-THE-EYE, A BRIEF ENCOUNTER, OR SOMETHING ELSE? WILL IT ENDURE, WILL IT LAST FOREVER? DOES IT REALLY MATTER? THIS IS NOW, THIS IS HOW YOU FEEL AT ONE SPECIAL MOMENT IN TIME. AND WHATEVER HAPPENS, YOU WILL MAKE AN INDELIBLE MEMORY. UNE AMOURETTE IS A LOVE AFFAIR - IT WON’T LAST FOREVER, BUT IT’S UNFORGETTABLE. THE NOTES MAKE A COMPLEX STATEMENT, FAR BEYOND THE SIMPLE PASSING FANCY. THE CITRUS OF NEROLI, SPICY AND FLORAL, BLENDS WITH THE SOFT, ELEGANT IRIS. THE SWEETNESS OF VANILLA IS TEMPERED BY AKIGALAWOOD, A SPECIAL DISTILLATION OF PATCHOULI THAT CREATES A WOODINESS. UNE AMOURETTE - A MODERN FRAGRANCE, BUT LIKE ICONIC FASHION OR A PASSIONATE LIAISON, IT’S TIMELESS. THIS IS THE SCENT OF A WOMAN A MAN WANTS TO REMEMBER, AND MAYBE WEAR HIMSELF.

It all began about eight years ago, on a cold winter evening, when Roland Mouret and his CEO Mark Langthorne came to the Etat Libre d’Orange offices, just above the boutique at 69 rue des Archives, Paris. They wanted to talk about a perfume with Etienne de Swardt, our creative director.

Roland was a fan. He wore our perfume, and in a British newspaper article entitled “Little Black Book: Roland Mouret,” he wrote about us: “A unique parfum company that produces the best exclusive scents with a twist.”

On that evening, we talked fashion and fragrance and the possibility of creating a perfume for Roland’s brand. And since we were drinking champagne, incredibly brilliant ideas emerged from the discussion. We were all very excited.

But in the days to come, when we were sober and realistic, we all realized that the time wasn’t right. Etat Libre d’Orange had just completed a collaboration for Tom of Finland, and we were about to embark on another with Tilda Swinton. Following his phenomenal success with the Galaxy dress, Roland was creating more iconic dresses that would become equally celebrated: the Moon, Pigalle, Titanium, and many others.

But we never forgot that remarkable evening and the ideas that came out of it. And it seemed minevitable that we would come back together.

We had so much in common! For both of us, collaborations were appealing challenges. Roland created collections for the Gap and Banana Republic. Etat Libre d’Orange has worked with the Tom of Finland foundation, with Tilda Swinton on Like This, with Rossy de Palma on Eau de Protection, with Mx Justin Vivian Bond on The Afternoon of a Faun. We collaborated to create Attaquer Le Soleil Marquis de Sade, and teamed up with perfume critic Chandler Burr to develop You or Someone Like You.

We both believe in a bold aesthetic, provocation, sensuality. We want our creations to enable clients to define themselves or become someone else. Roland drapes bodies — we drape skin. We use the same words: fusion, structure, magic, eroticism. We both have high profile fans. Roland talks about dressing to undress — and what better way is there to reveal the full power of a fragrance? Not to mention the fact that both our brands are creatively directed by hot, tempestuous Frenchmen.

Etat Libre d’Orange and Roland Mouret. We’re made for each other. Together, we have merged our philosophies, our attitudes and our identities, and created Une Amourette.

— Etat Libre d’Orange

DELIBERATELY PROVOCATIVE.

Une Amourette is a no-holds-barred fragrance. It is not for everybody. It’s divisive. It will corrupt the fragrance category with its subversive positioning.

It’s a scent that makes and leaves its mark.

It is worn first at the pulse point between the thighs. As she moves, walks, crosses her legs…the warmth and friction release an intoxicating burst of fragrance catching the attention of the most primitive sense: smell.

Une Amourette transcends gender. It is neither feminine nor masculine but it connects with the innate desire to take control, to be unique…

And when two bodies come together, the alchemy of skin on skin and scent on skin is unleashed, and the full power of the fragrance is revealed.

— Roland Mouret

Once I had met Roland Mouret, I began to imagine a very sophisticated and dark perfume, black and red. Patchouli and Indole are the backbones in this woody/animal floral. The head notes are brightly opened with Neroli, while Resinoide Iris, Akigalawood and Resinoide Incense form the foundation of this story.

— Daniela Andrier, parfumer

Neroli, Iris, Vanilla Absolute, Akigalawood

The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

“If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is, or what “God’s fragrance” means, lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there close.

Like this.”

This is possibly my favorite poem of all time. It restores me like the smoke/rain/gingerbread/greenhouse my scent sense is fed by. It is a poem about simplicity, about human-scaled miracles. About trust. About home. In my fantasy there is a lost chapter of Alice in Wonderland - after the drink saying Drink Me, after the cake pleading Eat Me - where the adventuring, alien Alice, way down the rabbit hole, far from the familiar and maybe somewhat homesick - comes upon a modest glass with a ginger stem reaching down into a pale golden scent that humbly suggests: Like This...

Ginger from Indonesia, pumpkin, tangerine, immortal flower, Moroccan neroli, rose, spicy notes, vetiver, woody notes, musk, heliotrope

EXIT THE KING

Nothing Can Rule Us

The fall of the Kings is the fall of all the forces that oppress us and prevent us from moving forward.

In order for a King to fall, an infinite number of little kingdoms must collapse: Family, Time, Love, Work, Toxic ex-lovers, the Patriarchy, the obligations to be sad, Capital, the obligation to be happy, anguish, sex and everything else that alienates us and prevents us from being truly free.

This is about making a perfume like a Loire castle, a perfume that could rise higher than the castle of Bloise, higher than the terrace where the last Valois watched the sun set in its glory. And then disappear, die, as if by magic before the fall. The fall of certainties, but above all, the fall of power.

#LETITALLFALL

Soap Foam, Pink Pepper, Timur, Jasmine, Rose, Lily of the Valley, Patchouli, Moss, Sandalwood

Cardamom, Turkish Rose, Saffron, Cocoa, Oud, Amber woods, Bergamot

69 Rue des Archives is the address of Etat Libre d’Orange. Archives 69 is the essence of Etat Libre d’Orange. This is a perfume designed to free the senses, to open the heart to all the possibilities. It is an invitation to pleasure, an ode to seduction. It comes without restrictions, rules or regulations. It is yours to do with as you wish.

This is the scent of sensual liberation.

Pink berries, tangerine, pepper leaf, orchid & prune JE, benzoin, camphor, incense, patchouli, musk…

To attack the sun, to drive it from the universe, to create perpetual darkness – what an outrageous proposition! But Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, was an outrageous man. He took on many roles: writer, revolutionary, philosopher, libertine. He disdained the social norms and he demanded unrestrained freedom. He questioned every assumption about love, beauty, even violence, and he ignored the taboos.  He wanted to attack the sun and ignite the world, liberate us from our preconceptions, break down the barriers which keep us from accepting our own desires. We identify with him, because we try to do the same.

Which is why Etat Libre d’Orange has chosen to celebrate a man who celebrated extremes. We have invited the Marquis de Sade to join our family of outrageous perfumes. He has accepted with pleasure . . . and maybe a little pain.

Etat Libre d’Orange and the Marquis de Sade. It’s a marriage made in heaven, or possibly in hell.  Either way, it works. Together, we launch an assault on the sun.

To read Sade is to take a risk — one is suddenly forced to face one’s self, exposed. It’s a wonderful risk to take if you want to plunge yourself into the heart and the body of humanity. Because Sade liberates.
He pushes us to imagine and to desire, far beyond the boundaries which saturate our perspective.

"How many times, dear God, have I not longed to be able to attack the sun, snatch it out of the sky, create a general darkness, or use that star to ignite the world."

As a creator of perfume, how could I open my perspective, imagine beyond my limitations? A very personal question. The cistus! One of my paradoxes. One of my gray areas.

I have always recoiled from the cistus, I’ve avoided it or hidden it under thick layers of vanilla and amber as a way of escaping it. This is why I have made myself confront a radical formula: the cistus, exposed, and in all its states.

My dear Marquis: here’s to your suns, to our volcanoes!

— Quentin Bisch, perfumer

From the depths of his prisons, Sade constantly reminded his contemporaries
- and all men - of his injunction to go beyond compromise, to overcome conformity, and to always put freedom rst.

To be yourself, without suffering the judgment of others; to be yourself and to live as you want to live... "All human happiness is in the imagination," Sade reminds us.

Sade was the freest man who ever lived. Sade is desire and passion, strength and tenderness, provocation and sensuality. His scent is the same: in nitely volcanic.

Like his perfume, Sade cannot be banished, reduced to silence, made to disappear.
He is there, always there: unforgettable. This is an eternal fragrance that endures just as his thought endures, beyond time.

— Hugues de Sade

Cistus (A genus of flowering plants in the rockrose family)

This is the portrait of a lady. She can be seen in the feminine cameo, in the soft, delicate profile, in the dreamy image of an incandescent beauty. What once was shell has been carved in relief by a devoted artisan, to emerge as an idealized woman.

Jewels, too... an emerald, a sapphire, a diamond, what once was a stone is given time and affection by a gemcutter and becomes a brilliant object of beauty. In the raw state, as a stone, as a shell, only the extraordinary eye can see the inherent treasure. With time, affection and devotion, the facets begin to appear, and a gem emerges. She is a jewel, and she dazzles. Like the proverbial woman of virtue, her price is far above rubies or pearls.

Her value is eternal, timeless. Like a precious gem, she transcends ephemeral fashion. Like every rare stone, she is classic, yet original. She is unique, with her own special colour, her own exclusive brilliance. But beyond the glitter, beneath the shimmer and sparkle, there is a secret fire within the gem. Here can be found the richness of spirit, the tender heart. She must have a perfume that reveals herself as a romantic jewel, a fragrance that evokes her worth, her many facets. She requires a scent with notes that come together in unexpected ways, where the fresh bergamot joins the delicate floral ylang ylang, where a sweet tropical coconut can meet the bright earthiness of Clary Sage. Finally, a rich patchouli merges with a creamy benzoin, and she is unforgettable.

Bergamot & Italian lemon, pink berries essence, iris of Tuscany, ylang ylang, clary sage, coconut JE, vetiver from Haiti, benzoin, vanilla, patchouli

We’ve given you decadent, we’ve given you outrageous, and now we give you nice. We pay allegiance to the concept of a modest cologne. Not an ordinary cologne, not a basic cologne. A proper cologne that achieves the perfection of simplicity.

The Cologne of Etat Libre d’Orange is a tender introduction to our sensual collection, a gentle initiation into our subversive world. This is an adaptable cologne that showers your body with a fresh joy. It’s whatever you want it to be, and you make it your own. It’s an easy pleasure, a scent for everyone, to splash on all over and wear everywhere. We offer you a new and different way to experience Etat Libre d’Orange.

Blood orange, orange blossom, bergamot, jasmine, musk, leather

By its very nature, perfume conjures sensual collusion - between partners-in-crime drawn together despite themselves by its invisible, soundless siren call; between the scent and the skin that bears it; between the notes that conjoin to create a chimera. The downy bloom of an apricot cheek. The yielding softness of a white kid glove. The velvety warmth of a lover’s body. Skin to be nipped or stroked...

Once the aphrodisiac rush of ginger and rum burns through, Dangerous Complicity unveils this passionate pact between fruit, flower and flesh.

The apricot, tea and violet facets of the tiny osmanthus blossom morph into delicate suede. The coconut-white petals of jasmine betray a whiff of the Beast lurking within the Beauty. The tropical lushness of ylang-ylang conjures salty, sun-kissed skin. The smoky creaminess of sandalwood hints at secret musky places in the chocolate-dark undergrowth of patchouli.

 This is the scent of skin on skin — or should that be sin on skin? — intimate and sexy, edgy but smooth as a swans-down powder puff. The scent of leather and powder, or rather: the softly scented trace a bad boy’s leather jacket would leave on the powdered skin of a femme fatale. The masculine yielding to the feminine in a fragrant folie à deux - or is it the other way round?

Ginger, Jasmine, Leather, Patchouli, Rum, Sandalwood, Ylang-Ylang

A child can either charm or annoy us with the same ruthlessness. A child can be irresistible with his angel-sweet smile but he also knows how to drive us crazy. Under the angel, the faked innocence of a demon.

After the gentle top notes of orange blossom and marshmallow, breaks the unexpected accord of coffee, leather and cold tobacco, a shrilling symbol of our sleepless nights. True to his reputation of “polymorphic pervert”, this mini-sized tyrant is only happy when he succeeds in imposing his whims, which he always manages to do.

What a sweet little monster!

Orange blossom, marshmallow, coffee, rose, cold tobacco, leather, amber, musk

A bleeding rose. A candy rose. A rose that tastes of fresh milk, a talcum powdered baby’s bottom, a wealth of sugared kisses. At Etat Libre d’Orange, the Virgin rarely wanders far from the Whore. Perhaps she is one and the same. Warmed by the fire of this woman, the noses have embraced a fanciful vision. They have created for her a perfume of protection, a refuge on the battlefield of love. Defensive yet transparent, Eau de Protection conceals as it reveals. For her, a caress is demanded, while those around her are struck with awe. The noses have extracted that which is most profound in her, the essence of her. They have distilled her honey and squeezed the juice from her heart.

Black pepper, ginger, Bulgarian rose, bergamot, jasmine, benzoin from Laos, blood accord, patchouli, incense, cocoa

Legend has it that an apple from a tree fell on Newton’s head – and thus, the theory of universal gravitation was born. But then let’s imagine a different scene – Newton, asleep under a rose bush. And instead of an apple, a flower falls, an enormous rose, a fully scented, fleshy rose. Would he have felt it? Would he have plunged his face into the heart of the flower? And what would this mean for his theory?

This scent: A chypre! And a very precise and clear-cut formula, like something that falls on you, sudden and direct. And never leaves you. A trail of scent that holds on. Akigalawood and patchouli for a honeyed rose.

Newton, excuse us! Your Crucial Experience showed us that colors are not characteristics of objects but properties of light. We now know, thanks to you, that white light is a mixture of rays with the nuances of the rainbow. You also showed us that just because an object IS red does not mean that we see it as red. If it appears red to our visual perception, this is because, when illuminated with a white light source (for example, sunlight), its surface absorbs all the colored light rays that compose it, EXCEPT the reds.

So forgive us for taking inspiration from your Experimentum Crucis! You have been the inspiration and the source of criticism for so many. And as your theory has changed our vision of the world, we have tried to create a fragrance that will change the world.

Lychee, Apple, Rose NeoAbsolute, Jasmin Absolute, Honey, Patchouli, Musks

He brings the sun. Here, find an innocent wisdom that points to dreams and liberation. This is the golden eye that reflects beauty and conflict, rapture and pain.

Fils de dieu is an emotional fragrance, a scent that requires a sympathetic connection between the server and the served, the giver and the taker, and the willingness to exchange roles.

With the refreshing zest of lime and ginger, spiced with cardamon and coriander, soothed with shiso and rice, infused with the tropical warmth of the coconut, this is a scent that supports the escape from conformity and eases the way to freedom from convention.

Lime, ginger, coriander leaves, coconut JE, rice, shiso, bergamot, vetiver, castoreum, musk, amber, leather

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