Etat Libre D'Orange: Divin' Enfant

I've worn and appreciated it for months, but current events brought me back to Divin' Enfant for a closer look. Hearing raves about another orange blossom fragrance, Maison Francis Kurkdjian's APOM, I took the first available opportunity to smell it, and was, to use Nathan Branch's phrase, woefully underwhelmed. While APOM has good longevity, it seems fairly weak in every other respect. There's no THERE there. It surprised me all day, wafting up from my arm. It seemed to have said everything it had to say. What was the point of sticking around?

I thought of APOM again this week, when Etat Libre D'Orange announced the upcoming release of a scent inspired by Tilda Swinton. What a perfect match, I thought. Swinton has always worked with smaller directors on compellingly oddball projects. By choosing her, Etat Libre D'Orange has advanced a celebrity sensibility they initiated with Rossy Di Palma: one that celebrates the unique rather than capitalize on the cliched. I pulled out my bottle of Divin' Enfant, forgotten behind more recent purchases. In contrast to APOM, it seemed even better than I remembered, so lush and dense and full of things to admire.

Listen, don't look at me. I can't smell the alleged marshmallow in Divin'. It doesn't even smell particularly sugary to me, no sweeter than orange blossom itself. People who discuss it on the web tend to engage in a debate about how much of an infant Enfant is. There's supposed to be a tantrum in there, so which dominates: the precious little thing or the monster child? I'm not sure I see the point of that, though I'm guessing this is an argument having to do with how sweet it seems to some. I'm not sure I smell rose, amber, leather, or musk, either, but it's all very well blended, emphasizing the orange blossom without dominating it. I've never thought of orange blossom as particularly innocent. I do smell a nicely judged addition of tobacco, and an interesting counterpoint of mocha, anyway.

Where APOM is rather flat and inert on my skin, Divin'Enfant sings. It has personality, a lot of presence. Whether that presence is adult or juvenile isn't something I've wasted much time pondering. I wear the hell out of it. Enfant has what I'm starting to recognize is a trademark Etat quality: it feels rich and playful without making these things seem like polar opposites. The line merges high and low in fascinating ways, and I think Etat is ultimately far more populist than Maison Kurkdjian, which seems to think that people who can't afford their perfumes but can afford their cleaning liquids will see this as a real bargain and an aspirational gateway. Etat makes one size for all. Aside from the celebrity fragrances, everything is priced the same.

At a time when a small bottle of Chanel costs you between sixty and eighty, seventy five for a niche perfume is about as close to a bargain as you can expect for a luxury item. What you are promised for this is, more often than not, a damn good bottle of perfume. Funny how people dismiss Etat's sense of humor; inappropriate, they say. In bad taste. Out to shock for shock's sake. What could be more ridiculously inappropriate than offering someone who can't afford your perfume a bottle of overpriced cleaning solvent. Only the well off can smell good, by this logic. The rest of us are offered a lovely bucket of mop water. Surely this is more offensive than a cartoon penis. Etat's "sense of humor" makes a practice of poking fun at such B.S., and I can't thank them enough.

I think people are mistaken in viewing this as shock value. Let's be honest. These days, shocking is a great bottle of perfume, as good as its hype.

Dior Ambre Nuit

The fourth in a series of colognes initiated and originally curated by Hedi Slimane, one time bad boy at Dior, Ambre Nuit had some steep competition. Cologne Blanche, Bois D'Argent, and my favorite by far, Eau Noire, were basic but rich, presented in almost industrial looking, over-sized bottles. They were made to be worn generously, using a grade of ingredient which made a little go a long way. The colognes were hard to find and filtered out into the market the way niche lines do, primarily by word of mouth. The perfumers involved delivered some of their best work, indicating the kind of artistic freedom a niche line typically provides. Bois D'Argent was Annick Menardo at her best, revisiting themes and motifs she'd explored more commercially in Hypnotic Poison (also Dior), Bulgari Black, and Body Kouros (Yves Saint Laurent). Francis Kurkdjian hadn't done much at the time, unless you consider how many units two of his earliest creations, Gaultier Le Male and Narciso Rodriguez Her, moved off the shelves. His Eau Noire remains, for me, the most skillfully imaginative use of the immortelle note in fragrance, and was ample indication, way back in 2004, that Kurkdjian had the strength of vision and a recognizable enough fingerprint to create his own line.

Slimane had strength of vision too, and helped to make Dior Homme stand out in a marketplace where name alone increasingly mattered less. Perhaps he was a bit too visible. He left Dior in 2007, and the indication until now was that the line, at least vis a vis fragrance, lost not just the sense of vision he'd provided but any vision whatsoever. Their next moves seemed more like stumbles. Dior Homme Sport, while perfectly nice, was a fairly insipid flanker to Polge's brilliant Dior Homme. Packaging it in the same bottle seemed majestically ill-judged. It was hard to imagine pale, pencil thin Slimane on a treadmill, cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth; intentionally or not, this was the picture Sport drew. Fahrenheit 32, also perfectly nice, was either a step back or a standing in place.

Until now, the cologne series languished. It lay so still I thought it was dead. Word of Ambre Nuit filled me with cautious dread. Surely the world could do without another synthetic amber. They'd already taken the edge out of Dior Homme, grafting a little red racing strip onto what felt like a spaceship by way of a Bentley. Surely someone with the freedom to use his head realized that bastardizing sleepers this way did the line as a whole no favors, whatever the immediate gain by association. Maybe the series was better off dead, but no one seemed willing to protect its grave from vandalism.

There was every reason to expect the worst, and things beyond Dior have gotten equally grim, especially in terms of masculine fragrance, so the quality and pleasure of Ambre Nuit isn't just a surprise but a real blessing. To call it cologne is an understatement. Like the others, Ambre Nuit lasts better than most toilet waters. It feels and smells rich and textured. The clear liquid is packaged in honey-colored glass. It sits comfortably between masculine and feminine. François Demachy has created in Ambre a spiced rose which makes as much sense on a woman as a man. And what a rose. In an interview with the Fragrance Foundation, he listed rose as an exact scent he would one day like to capture. "Just when you think you know everything about [it], there are always new things to discover," he said. Ambre Nuit isn't by any stretch a photorealist rose. It doesn't aim to be, but it feels like some kind of discovery along that path Demachy is traveling.

In the same interview, he admitted he has yet to master the use of cumin in fragrance. While admitting it can work wonders, he hasn't discovered the right proportions. I don't get the sense there's cumin in Ambre Nuit, but it offers ample evidence that the perfumer uses spice notes carefully and intelligently, practicing restraint where others exercise indulgence. Ambre Nuit feels just right in any number of ways, resulting in an infinitely satisfying wear. The dry down doesn't offer much development. Ambre Nuit is in the end what it was from the beginning, a song you play on repeat all day because you love it so much. There are resins in there, those spices, rose, a nice, mellow amber. The fragrance has the soft feel of leather to it, adjusted by woods and patchouli. It isn't a show-stopper. It isn't incredibly cutting edge, though it is without a doubt more interesting than 99 percent of its mass market peers. It strikes an interesting, precarious balance. Demachy addresses the need for vision as perfumer at Dior, but seems well aware of the need for the walk along that tightrope.

Dior is a context, ultimately, and any story Demachy wishes to tell must somehow serve to advance that larger narrative. He's interested in refining parts of the story, essentially. "I'm not saying I have a particular vision of perfumery," he says, "but at Dior certain types of perfumes are expected and, most of the time, created." What the brand has sometimes lacked is more of a hand-crafted feel, in his opinion. Despite their current vogue, perfumers aren't an elite but an imaginative group of skilled artisans, assigned the responsibility to create not just effect but substance, a synergy between the two poles. More personal, hand-crafted products might not sell very well, but they provide a backbone of quality and in their own ways provide subtext to the brand, adding detail and nuance to the sweeping plot points of the master narrative which is Dior. Ambre Nuit shows a lot of respect to the line but has the good sense to demonstrate some amount of idiosyncrasy as well. What it adds to the story is character.

Parfums MDCI Rose de Siwa

I had no idea I was longing for a sweet pink rose scent, so dewy and innocent. All this time I’ve avoided the YSL Paris and Drole de Rose variety of rose fragrances and then I try Rose de Siwa and I have to sit down lest I fall and hit my head in mid-swoon.

Rose de Siwa quenches my thirst. It envelopes me in moist rose kisses. It is so delicately girly and beautiful. It is a caress on the cheek from a velvety pink rose petal.

This can’t be me writing this. I must be having a nervous breakdown. I’m the gal who likes Frederic Malle Une Rose, Diptyque L’Ombre dans L’Eau and Ungaro Diva.

Rose de Siwa would be categorized in the same fruity floral rose-violet-peony category of scents as Bond No. 9 Chelsea Flowers, Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose, Creed Spring Flowers, Vera Wang Truly Pink and Les Parfums Rosine Roseberry. I do not wear any of these fragrances, I’m over the age of 22, it’s just not my thing.

But, Rose de Siwa is breathtaking. It easily surpasses all of these other fruity rose scents. Rose de Siwa is the purest, fairest rose I’ve ever smelled. Francis Kurkdjian is the cause of all this. And I read that he doesn’t even like working with rose scents. I think this makes me like Rose de Siwa even more, like it’s an unwanted child, left on my doorstep in a basket, that I’ll gladly take in and care for. I’ll put pink ribbons in her hair, and dress her up in the cutest pink gingham outfits, oh we’ll have so much fun me and little Rosie de Siwa.

Yes, it’s definitely a nervous breakdown or some sort of midlife crisis. But nevertheless, Rose de Siwa is stunning. It contains lychee! And I still love it.

Rose de Siwa is the truest sweet pink rose in fragrance form. There’s nothing soapy or powdery – all you need to do is bend down, feel the heft of the petals in your hand and inhale deeply.

Sometimes a pink rose, and only a pink rose, is all that's necessary.

Notes: Lychee, peony, hawthorn, Turkish and Moroccan roses, violet, cedar, musk, vetiver