HERMANN A MES COTES ME PARAISSAIT UNE OMBRE

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

By virtue of my mother, I am the son of a forgotten coast, far away in New Caledonia. At the mouth of the Ngoye live the Borindi, who have known since the twilight of the gods the great principle of harmony with Mother Nature:  to take from her no more than is necessary while preserving for tomorrow. They understand the future of mankind, and in the shade of the niaouli tree and jacarandas in bloom, they guide our first steps into this new direction for Etat Libre d’Orange.

In the early years of this new millennium, when my children were young and I was a hopeful thirty-year-old, I took them to see an animated film called Titan AE. I learned by heart the introduction, which went something like this:

“Once in a while, man unlocks a secret so profound that it can change the universe: fire, electricity, atom splitting.  At the dawn of the 21^st century, we invented the Titan program . . . ”

There is a jumble of romantic and titanic science fiction poetry that emerges from the slow, sure, and inevitable rocking of wastewaters in the industrial cycle. We want to make this perfume a messenger, in service not only to the survival of the species which results from seduction, but above all in service to the planet where our own miasmas must reflect beauty.

We believe that a new post-religious “jihad” is approaching, coming from an often disillusioned and polluting West, and echoing a new animistic era. Those who have committed crimes against the environment are repenting, and democracies are acknowledging nature as the sacred focal point, meant to be shared. The beliefs of the primitive and ancient tribes are back, and demand our full allegiance. This perfume will carry a universal message:  that which is dirty must reflect the beautiful,

“…and wash me clean of the bluish wine stains and the splashes of vomit,

Carrying away both rudder and anchor.” (Arthur Rimbaud, The Drunken Boat.)

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

Floral