We recently had a discussion about Etat Libre d’Orange here and that sent me to Surrender to Chance to get a few samples.
Etat Libre popped up around 2006 if I remember correctly and back in the day Patty sent me samples of the line. I do remember liking a few, loving one (Rien) and being pretty “meh” about the rest. Since then they have added ones that I have really loved (Like This, Eau de Protection) but on the whole I don’t think I’ve ever really fallen for them. I do remember having a vivacious time with my dear departed scent twin Gaia at Bendel’s waiting for some unsuspecting Scarsdale matron to give herself a big spritz of Secretions Magnifiques (even facilitating if necessary) but we got bored and went for lunch before hitting Barneys, hard. In any case, the ones that I sent off for were two that seemed innocuous and one that I had loathed, just to see if I still did.
(SPOILER ALERT) I still did.
The Ghost in the Shell Portia wrote about a few years ago and you should take a moment to go back and read it. Because I don’t have a heck of a lot to add, except that for me it seems like a brighter, metallic version of Lostmarch Laan-Ael. I have a bottle of that (somewhere) so I don’t need to spend $125 for 50ML. I am also not sure I need to smell like Froot Loops and milk served in a stainless steel sink, recently scrubbed.
I see looking back that I actually wrote about You or Someone Like You back in 2017 so I can (I suppose) be forgiven for forgetting about it. You can take a moment to click through and read my deathless prose on there. My impressions now aren’t all that different, just that I get more of a Doublemint vibe out of the opening, before it settles into the fresh muddled mint. I did not go back and buy this one and sort of wish I did, since it’s now $35 more (at $125) for the 50ML bottle than it was then. Inflation. Yippee.
Now onto the main event.
Secretions Magnifiques was part of the original release of their line in 2006 and I just remember thinking “g-d why?” I wrote on PST “Old, stale seawater evaporating on a hot summer day. The smell of the great Salt Lake, or the funk of seawater under a pier, left over from high tide and becoming more and more funky as it becomes more and more concentrated by the hot sun. Dead shellfish. Aquatic distilled to it’s quintessence” I pretty much hated it from the jump and washed it off fairly quickly. I’d been told by others that you have to stick with it and it gets better, and I tried. Oh, yes I tried. It only got worse. It went to CSI: Coney Island. Then Coney Island sex crime. I was told years ago that when this came out les Garçons in the Marais just loved it and practically bathed in it. I thought it smelled like you needed to thoroughly shower everywhere after a night at the Mineshaft, the trucks, and the tubs. (ooh, not only dating myself, but giving a TMI window as well!) If this works for you then I’m happy for you. I had to use Lysol to get it off my wrist, and even then.. So I now smell like the trucks after the Hazmat team cleaned up.
EDIT: I could still smell this on my wrist a good 12 hours later, even after using hand sanitizer, soap and water, and lord help me, Lysol disinfectant. It had calmed down a lot, to where I could smell the “secretions” portion of the program. Still not sure why anyone would need to smell like this. I don’t.
Have you smelled there? Does SM work for you? I honestly would love to hear from someone it does work on. Share in the comments.
Etat Libre scents are available all over including some discounters. My samples came from Surrender to Chance
Photos: my iPhone, Pexels, Wikimedia Commons
ELDO has always been one of those brands that I want to like more than actually like. Not brave enough to try SM though I have a sample sitting around in the depths of my closet. There’s a few that are interesting and one that I have a decant of – Noel au Balcon, which I always misread as Noel du Bacon and am pleasantly surprised when I spray it by the lack of smokiness. At some point I might even get a bottle of this one but unfortunately, the rest, tend to either be “interesting” but not something I want on my for prolonged regularity or else start out nice and then fall apart in dry down.
You hit the nail on the head. “Want to like more than actually like.”
And Christmas of Bacon is my idea of heaven..
And FU@K wordpress for continually marking me as spam!!
I loathed SM (and of course it lasted forever — I think I put it on my finger? you are way braver than I am!). That metallic, blood smell … ugh. Revolting. The only full bottle I have is Remarkable People, and I still need to try Spice Must Flow.
There are a couple I liked enough to get a full bottle. You or Someone Like You and Like This (re-review coming up.) But most of them were just not quite..
This is a line that I simply couldn’t get into. I remember your SM post and… you did it so I didn’t have to.
And I still don’t have to.
::neener neener::
And thank you for taking one ( actually several) for the team!
Xoxo
I guess it says something about my forgiving nature that I am willing to give second chances.
It says “You’re a fool!”
if you are having issues with the blog once again marking your comments as ‘Spam” please keep trying. I had to actually log in as an administrator to be able to answer comments.
Ya, it seems to come in spurts for me. Lately it’s been on and off again, but doable…….and just got marked spam. 2nd try now…now 3rd
It’s taken me over 15 years but I have almost finished my bottle of Rien and will look to see whether it’s still around. I rally like Bendelirious and liked Eau de Protection.
I know it is, and at the frangrancenet place for cheap. Just sayin’
I have tried so many from ELDO over the years, including the ones named, and this brand just doesn’t do it for me–with the one exception of Remarkable People, which is my annual go-to for Thanksgiving events. Just the right amount of Fall spice.
Oh I will have to look for that one!
I am amused at the idea of smelling like Fruit Loops. The minty one: meh. I bought a mini of Cartier Roadster this summer, and that checks off my minty needs. The SM one, just no. Eternally no. Forever and a day, no. And of course it has the lasting strength of a nuclear bomb. Murphy’s Perfume Law, right? The more you hate it, the longer it lingers.
Yeah that’s usually the way. I kind of like the Froot Loops one, but it made me hungry.
SM didn’t work for me but did it really smell of blood, semen & crime scene? No. I’ve worked in A&E (aka ER) & operating theatres. Other than both SM & blood having a twang of the metallic they smell nothing alike.
All I got was marine bilge with maybe a touch of rotting seafood, then eventually a very anaemic rose similar to Stella aka the worst rose perfume ever
Well my contact with blood is thankfully limited. But I stand by the Mineshaft and the tubs. The comment anyway. 🙂
Ah, Etat Libre. It has released some good things, a handful of great ones, and some that you don’t fool around with.
What you said about lysol reminded me of working the late shift at McDonalds in Seabrook, New Hampshire, beck around 1980. Would arrive home at 1 AM or so after washing the fry wracks. Washed my forearms in Clorox (really) before showering off the stank and going to bed. I still got Covid — twice.
Funny story about the Lysol. I had a bunch of it from covid cleaning and used it in the garage to clean up after the plumber cleared a pipe that had poop water in it. My neighbors had a tizzy- not about the poop, but about the Lysol! They acted like it was some sort of poison gas or something! All I could think was that they didn’t grow up in the 70’s or 80’s or their Mom never cleaned. Or she used Pine Sol. If our bathrooms didn’t reek of Lysol then they just weren’t clean in my Mom’s opinion.
That was definitely the gold standard of bathroom cleanliness! And even now… for the TERLET!?
Lysol ftw!!!
Yep. I find it comforting to come home after a day of airing out and cleaning the place to smell the bleach in the laundry and the lysol in the bathroom. It’s probably very American.
I remember those commercials where someone would come into someone’s house and exclaim “I can tell by the smell you’ve been cleaning!”
As opposed to calling the fire department to report hazardous gas, like one of my neighbors did.
I remember when Etat Libre d’Orange came out. All the blogs were talking about their perfumes. The only two I tried were Putain des Palaces and Secretions Magnifiques. They were just uninteresting and not particularly pleasant smells and certainly not what I wanted in my perfumes. BTW I never did put them on my skin.
I kind of thought that they were just sort of silly. On the level of an 8 year old laughing maniacally and inexplicably at saying the word “poop”