A stellar performance – Experimentum Crucis from Etat Libre D’Orange

ELDO’s latest release – and limited edition – is billed as a scent that transcends the laws of physics, because “love and the trail of a scent are stronger than gravity and time”. Add a sexy trailer with a rousing soundtrack, and it all looks very exciting.

But does it smell as exciting?

Spoiler alert – no, it doesn’t.

Ok, so the bottle is special…

As for the juice? Here are the notes:

Apple, Cumin, Lychee; Honey, Jasmine Absolute, Rose NeoAbsolute, Akigalawood, Musk, Patchouli.

The space odyssey opens with rose rose rose. Lychee? Maybe. I don’t pick it up as an individual note, but there’s something very ‘Thai’ about this rose which is where the lychee may be hiding. Its pairing with the apple makes it rather pretty and very pink. This is a light and flighty kind of rose, not a rich and sexy red.

People have described the rose as being animalic, perhaps thanks to the cumin and honey notes in supporting roles.  But as it dries down, you realise it doesn’t have a ‘living quality’. Instead, it’s dry and thin – a pretty facsimile – a silk rose gathering dust.

Much has been said about its incredible sillage and staying power, and that much is true. For something so delicate, it’s impressively pervasive. I squirted mine once, then could smell the sample coming a mile off. Props to the creator, it’s a technical feat.

But then, so’s the 3rd Lord of the Rings film. And like that, Experimentium Crucis goes on forever, but doesn’t really do anything. It’s too linear to justify its longevity, hanging around like a just-tolerable smell.

Some of the guys at Bloom reckon this is a better version of I Am Trash. I disagree. Les Fleurs du Dechet had a cool development, brief as it was.

Experimentium Crucis is extraordinarily good value if you want the Ariston of roses. But it’s too dry and acrid to be a five-star fragrance. Not sticky or jammy or deep or dark or surprising; just clinical and cold.

It’ll stay with me a long time. But only literally.

 

 

 

I Am Trash by Etat Libre D’Orange

It’s odd how good memories attach themselves to bad smells. For me, years of trashy holidays to trashy holiday resorts have indelibly linked the smell of sub-standard drainage infrastructure to top-notch fun. So when Summer rolls round and I get a whiff of sewage, I get a little bump of nostalgia. Sick, but true.

I remember, when I was about 8, I’d go and stay with my cousins in France in the Summer holidays. Oddly, the scent I recall from those times is a very specific French-cheese, overripe fruit smell – not unpleasant. Bruised peaches – sticky, homely and comforting.

With its aesthetic roots in decomposition and wriggling worminess, I expected to get something similar from Les Fleurs du Dechet  / I Am Trash – an overripe, fruity, earthy scent, deep and interesting. I was ready for it.

But what’s grown out of the months of anticipation is something more unexpected.

On first spray there’s a spray of fresh green apple peel, as if the fruit’s being cut up right in front of you. Within seconds, the apple turns to a vibrant, dripping juicy mango. And while you’re getting your head around that, it changes again to a supersweet pineapple. It’s quite the ride around the fruit salad.

Over the next half hour, things calm down a bit, and we take a slower, more measured step – floral notes begin to appear, blending smoothly with soft strawberry tones. This perfume’s nice. It’s EASY. It might even be a crowd-pleaser.

But then, like a weed pushing up, Les Fleurs du Dechet / I Am Trash grows out of the benign and becomes something wilder and untamed. To call it a dry-down feels wrong, because it gets richer and riper; the fruit turns, growing ever-sweeter, greener and fermenting. It takes time, but it rots as it blossoms.

And then, just as things were getting interesting, it fades into a pretty skin scent.

I’m confused. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or enchanted.

There’s incredible artistry in the opening. How can a scent be designed to spin through so many distinctive fruits in seconds? And the way that freshness gives way so fast to more luscious, mulchy tones is remarkable; just as in Ogilvy’s time-lapse video, we experience decay in hyper-speed.

And then it all just…disappears.

Maybe that’s the point.

You can try and buy I Am Trash / Les Fleurs du Dechet at Bloom Perfumery in Covent Garden. 50ml EDP for £82, 100ml for £115. 

Upcycled and zero-waste notes:

Akigalawood  

Apple  

Atlas Cedar 

Iso-E-Super  

Rose Absolute 

Sandalore

What to wear in Summer – top scents for the beach and beyond

ONE TO WEAR IN A HEATWAVE You Or Someone Like You by Etat Libre D’Orange

When the mercury’s rising, this scent is like taking a dip in a mojito. It bursts with freshness – lovely ripped mint leaves mixed up with citrussy zest and stirred together with ice. After a few minutes the frosty edge melts off and a beautiful pinky rose starts to emerge. For such a top-note-dominant fragrance this has (at the risk of sounding like a Colgate commercial) freshness that lasts and lasts. And I love its deviation from the heaviness – both in formulation and connotation – that so many of ELDO’s scents are burdened with. Effortlessly cool.

£82 for 50ml, £115 for 100ml from Bloom

ONE TO WEAR HOLDING A BUCKET AND SPADE What I Did On My Holidays by 4160 Tuesdays

This is a message in a bottle straight from the British seaside. Every sniff rockets me back to sticky 1980s summers, mostly spent buried up to my neck on a Lyme Regis beach. I’ve never experienced a perfume that evokes such a true sense of nostalgia. This is the scent of the seaside shop where you go sandy-footed to buy your crabbing nets and your lilo. Mint rock, vanilla ice cream, coconut suntan lotion and fresh salty air…it’s sweet in every way.

£15 for 9ml – £90 for 100ml from 4160 Tuesdays

ONE TO WEAR WITH A BIKINI  Soleil Blanc by Tom Ford

This is a super-sexy scent, perfectly mimicking the sultriness of sunkissed skin. It’s suntan lotion on overdrive; beautiful coconut oil blended with blooming white flowers, radiating melanin-production and fun. A slightly cheap (sadly not in price) but glamorous scent, designed to pair perfectly with red lipstick on the beach – in Saint Tropez, not St Ives. Save it for sundown.

£139 for 50ml, £207 for 100ml from AllBeauty (amongst others)

ONE TO WEAR AL FRESCO Pure Azure by Phaedon

I’m desperately after a full bottle of Pure Azure. It’s so delicious – a big, beautiful, complex fig fragrance, full of lovely warm orange blossom and sun-drenched florals. According to the lovely guys at Bloom, the neroli at its heart is ‘derived through steam distillation of orange tree blossom as opposed to much spicier and honeyed absolute obtained through CO2 extraction’. However, they’ve done it, the result is gorgeously and truly Mediterranean. This is one to be savoured under grape vines and warm dark skies, at a table of mouth-watering mezze that keeps coming until you say stop. A real wrist-snuffler.

£112 for 100ml from Bloom