This strange and otherworldly rose scent is talismanic, designed to safeguard; ward off evil, protect you from death as you battle in the arena of love. As you suffer the effects of the poison tipped arrows of desire this uniquely twisted take on black romance will slash at life and hold you close. If you bleed it will tend your wounds, if you swoon it will stand vigil and keep you safe from harm, cradling you in cocoa and patchouli tinted beauty.
Eau de Protection was created for the cubist beauty Rossy de
Palma: Almoldovar muse, actress and model by perfume terrorists Etat Libre
D’Orange. It is so far removed from the usual glittering neon celebrity style
perfumes that saturate the market as to be moon dust to compost. But then De
Palma is hardly your average star. Her extraordinary broken beauty is defiantly
at odds with our conceptions of conventional Hollywood manipulated and
platicised appearances. Yet she is utterly magnificent. ELd'O also recently
created Like This for Tilda Swinton,
another maverick beauty who does not give a damn for convention. Like This was made by Mathilde Bijaoui
who created my beloved Lily & Spice
for Penhaligon’s. Like This is beautifully
weird and unsettling, with a charismatic pumpkin note running through it, giving
it a spiced gourd-like tint. Both fragrances demonstrate a willingness to push
at scented limits given the right inspiration and muse.
Etat do
not always get it right; their recent stab at a Sex Pistols scent was just
dreadful, a nasty cheap smelling throwaway thing with very little thought
behind it. It could have been extraordinary: a palette of metals, leather, wax,
safety pin effects, spray paint, the scent of aerosols and sweaty dripping
gigs. An angry bitter scent with a sweet hit of kohl rimmed nostalgia to
underpin the violence. But instead it was dull and barely there, musky and
faded to dull nothingness on the skin.
Rossy de
Palma’s Eau de Protection is scented
armour for the battlefield of love and desire. It is one of my favourite Etat
scents. I love their perfumes and have collected and worn many of them
including:
‘Rien’ (my first…so deep and shattering like
a gunshot in a chapel)
‘Charogne’ - fleshy and flayed, the wolf
tearing out of its human host in the milky glow of a full moon.
‘Jasmin et Cigarettes’ - me as a drunken Jane
Birkin, forever reliving my drunken Paris student years.
‘Tom of Finland’ - just the most delicious sueude-tastic
leather ever, sniffing Harley seats and wishing you could have fucked James
Dean in Giant.
‘Delicious Closet Queen’ - creepy intersex stalker
scent.
‘Vierges et Torreros’ - Ava Gardner
whispering faster pussycat kill kill in your dreams…. Surrounded by bull’s
balls and blood on the sand.
‘Noël au Balcon’ - If Santa was your
boyfriend.
‘Sécrétions Magnifiques’ - Just plain filthy. Compulsive, disgusting and yet strangely moving.
All of
them have a hypnotic depth of something untoward, wicked and glossily
pornographic. I’m not entirely convinced by the cod-erotica of the overly
suggestive website. But the house has carved a distinctive and divisive niche
for itself, one that reeks of styrax, posturing, balsams, jasmine, artifice and
hissy aromachemical cleverness.
Eau de Protection is artfully arranged, the main elements of
the perfume twisted and turned like art nouveau metalwork around the central
Bulgarian rose motif. Then everything is lacquered in red to heighten the sense
of alarm and sex. Parts have been blasted with light and dust, muting the
effects, allowing areas of the scent to settle with tremendous style and grace.
The exposed tea rose aspect of the scent is at once steely, wistful, feminine
and bizarrely androgynous. The addition of ginger, a startling lick of jasmine
and enormous amounts of benzoin heightens the already overwrought sense of
unease the fragrance builds on the skin.
In her
desire to create an ultimate rose scent, Rossy de Palma has initiated something
daring and sublimely deep. Soft and needy, feminine and palpable but at the
same time barbed and savage. The uncomfortable truth of love is pain. Love does hurt. Love is war. We need to protect and arm ourselves. Weaponry, charms,
talismans, voodoo. The disconcerting blood note in Eau de Protection is barely discernable until you realise the world
has shifted and the battle is nearly over. The ground around you is soaked
crimson.
The sun
is setting on a field of golden slaughter. The talismanic hoodoo, the perfumed
essences, the rose-tinted bindings have held you fast, kept you safe. You have
survived another day. Touching a bloodstained finger to your lips throws the
lush rose into vivid focus, the pricked fairytale magic, the swoon, the sleep,
the kingdoms lost in time.
The
sensuality of Eau de Protection is
magnificent. The resonance of the rose as it settles amid the moreish dust of
the cocoa and patchouli is like the tolling of a bell in the warm heat of
summer. There is a petrolic shimmer to it sometimes when I wear it, eddies of
petrol in pools at gas stations, shimmering up at the sky in iridescent
rainbows. Petrol chocolate rose. Only at Etat Libre d’Orange. Other times I get
the weird metal notes, the rust effect of sucking blood from your finger when
you cut yourself.
For more information on Etat Libre D'Orange and their seductive world of fragrance anarchy, click on the link below:
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