If you
love Asian food and all things Pacific Rim and fusion this fragrance is
perfection. I love making jasmine rice with jasmine flowers from Neal’s Yard,
lime zest and coconut milk. The aromas that fill my kitchen are divine. But the
moment of epiphany is having left the rice to slowly and magically transform,
is lifting off the lid and inhaling (eyes closed of course… )the citrus-sweet
steam billowing out with the bittersoft beauty of jasmine blooms. This physical
moment of vaporous gustatory olfaction is a startling concept for a perfume and
one which only Etat Libre D’Orange have the perfumed couilles to carry off.
Last year
Etat Libre D’Orange announced a new fragrance to be signed off by the talented,
artistic German perfumer Ralf Schwieger, a man who builds scents from seemingly
opposite elements and is very steeped in the aesthetics of fragrance. It was to
be called Philippine Houseboy and
would be built around steam, rice, citrus and animalic accords. After a name change,
we have Fils de Dieu (du riz et des agrumes),
a very original composition released alongside Bijou Romantique by French perfumer Mathilde Bijouai. Schwieger has
two acknowledged masterpieces under his belt, Eau des Merveilles for Hèrmes and the glorious, smudged and erotic Lipstick Rose created for the original
line-up of Editions Frédérick Malle.
Eau de Merveilles (2004) is the fragrance that really put
Schwieger on the olfactory map. Working with the influential Véronique Gaultier
at Hèrmes, he and co-creator Nathalie Feisthauser* played with the oceanic
salty skin sexiness of the sea and modern amber notes. What I like about Eau de Merveilles is the transformative
nature it has on the skin; body heat flips the accords into a second layer of
signals, all of them sweetly animalic and come hither sparkling. A tribute to the
weirdness of real ambergris, Eau de
Merveilles has a wonderful strangeness to it, a sense of being washed in
the ocean and then dusted lightly in golden sugars. It has a central floral
motif of lily of the valley and this is treated with reverence and beauty;
laced with elemi, bergamot, pink pepper, benzoin, warm woods and of course a
synthesised ambergris accord. A quite delicious and rewardingly complex skin
experience and one of the best perfumes in the Hèrmes canon.(*Nathalie Feisthauser
created the magnificently Sadean Putain
des Palaces, also for Etat Libre D’Orange, an aldehydic floral with
incredible boudoir violet notes softened by candlelight, rice powder and
swathes of animalics. It is one of the
most accomplished and truly finished
fragrances in the range).
One of
the most fascinating things about Eau de
Merveilles is of course its beauty on skin but also its wearability on fabric,
fur and wool. I’ve read in a couple of interviews that this was intentional. If
so, bravo! I love fragrances worn on clothes; woven through the actual fibres
around me, on scarves, jacket linings, pocket squares, cashmere and silk. There
are differences in the molecular spread of the aroma and I like the linger, the memory of the scent embedded
in cloth each time I take something from my wardrobe to wear.
Schwieger
was a late starter in perfumery terms, beginning his training at the Roure
School of Perfume in Grasse after training in chemistry in Berlin. His
breakthrough was Lipstick Rose in
2000, one of the original fragrances for Editions Frédérick Malle, a unique and
at the time, groundbreaking selection of fragrances published by Malle, whose
maternal grandfather founded Les Parfums Christian Dior.
Malle had
studied Art History and then joined the Roure School, studying with the legendary
Jean Amic (Opium and Y). In 2000, he launched nine fragrances
by nine perfumers, including Dominique Ropion, Olivia Giacobetti, Edmond
Roudnitska and Jean Claude Ellena. Malle wanted perfumers to be more visible,
more credible. This was rather radical from a marketing point of view.
Perfumers worked behind the scenes and handed on their work; other people, the
Houses themselves took the credit. True, there were some superstar noses, but
generally speaking, like directors behind the cameras, they were content to let
the actors or juice shine for the cameras and press. Editions Frédérick Malle
changed that. Perfume lovers have since become fascinated with the world of the
nose, the men and women who create the world’s vast array of mainstream, niche
and avant-garde smells.
This was
a seismic shift in the attitude toward the marketing and retail of fragrances.
Of course small numbers of aficionados have always been interested in the names
behind the notes as it were, as their personalities flicker through the perfumes
like musical motifs. Talented names were often smothered in mainstream Houses,
working with strict budget and marketing/brand briefs. Yet working for niche and artisan houses like Frédérick
Malle, L’Artisan Parfumeur and MDCI to name a few allowed some perfumers the
chance to really soar and spread extraordinary scented wings. Bigger houses
such as Dior, Hermes, Bulgari and Cartier then started to recognize the value
in having these olfactory artists creating more singular work alongside the
standard big budget crowd pleasers. So big names like Mathilde Laurent went to
Cartier, Ellena to Hermes, and Demachy to Dior. The shift and blurring of
artisan and mainstream has become intriguing and to be honest a little
confusing in the last decade or so. To be truly artisan now requires quite an
effort.
Released
in 2000 Schwieger’s Lipstick Rose
captures that delightful creamy soft boudoir scent of classic lipstick, a mixture
of fatty rose, smudged violet, vanillic skin and talcum. A woman in a haze of
retro beauty, applying make-up in blooming mirrors in a childs’s rose-tinted
memory. But there is a ruthless and animalic streak of modernity ruining
through Lipstick Rose, a lick of pole
dancer. A naughty raspberry note sparkles at the top as the scent opens and
this develops down like a trickle of forbidden liquor through the scent as it
warms through on skin. The rose/violet theme is a classical fragrance accord
that echoes down through decades of perfumery. I love L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Drôle de Rose for its cranberry-coloured
interpretation of nostalgic dressing up and scented nights out. But Lipstick Rose undercuts any melancholy
and sentimentality with the sexuality and danger of aldehydes and a deep, plush
kiss of throaty vanilla.
Etat
Libre D’Orange was started by the iconoclastic South African Etienne de Swardt.
After creating a totally bonkers scent Oh
my Dog! with Laurent Jugeau, he set up Etat Libre D’Orange in Paris, with
the tag line….Le parfum est mort. Vive le
parfum! (Perfume is dead. Long live perfume!). The portfolio of fragrances
is witty and vivacious. The blurb and over-sexualised marketing can be a little
tiresome. Although the recently revamped website is a huge improvement on the
old one. But at the end of the day a brand lives and dies by its fragrances. I
have blogged previously about my beloved Rossy
de Palma Eau de Protection, a gorgeous sensual, dark bloody rose. Tom of Finland is a remarkable porny
leather. Charogne and Rien are the two other Etat fragrances I
like to have in my collection.
So I was
very excited last year when news surfaced that Schwieger was creating a
fragrance for ELdO. At the time the name bandied about was Philippine Houseboy and some rather dodgy looking ethnic publicity
images appeared, masks and totems etc, with references to South Pacific
eroticism. Thankfully the name changed to Fils
de Dieu (du riz et des agrumes) and was launched alongside Bijou Romantique, a sensual rich
oriental style scent, inspired by jewels, decadence and lavish loves. Bijou is not
the most original fragrance. I love a ravishing velvety oriental, but there is
something lacking in Bijou. Bite I think, teeth behind the lipstick. A strange
void of real animalics, which is odd considering ELdO usually drench their
fragrances in every animalic under the sun.
Fils de Dieu is unquestionably a totally original scent
experience. I have never smelt anything quite like it. The harmomising of the
notes and accords is masterly. Essentially a simmering steamed twist on a
classic oriental theme; Fils de Dieu plays
with (and subverts) animalic, citric and vanillic accords to create an updated
slant on Guerlain’s Jicky, with
elements of Mitsouko and Shalimar prowling around the edges of
the scented fire. I caught warped twists of Guerlain’s fabled guerlinade in the
dance of rose, jasmine, amber, tonka and the heightened hesperdiric aspect of
the ginger.
As a
gourmand lover though, it is the beautiful handling of the milky rice notes and
the little dashes of coconut that make this fragrance so beautiful to inhale
and wear. It opens with that glorious, lifting-the-lid-off-jasmine-rice scent I
mentioned at the beginning of this piece and then unfurls layers of greenness,
with shiso leaf and rubbed green coriander, then delicate soft floral notes as
if the petals were themselves steamed on the rice or floating on a broth of
sweetened coconut milk. Then wonderful and I mean truly wonderful clean musks.
The castoreum is superb, inviting, and just a little bit fuckable. All of this
is woven through with cinnamon and that mouthwatering ginger accent. I have
never really liked ginger in my fragrances, it is always far too bath-timey, or
dry-spicy and dull. But Schwieger has really highlighted the beauteous wetness
of the lemongrass quality of this fabulous rhizome. It just sings out of the
composition.
Interestingly
De Swardt asked Schwieger to watch two films as inspiration, the hothouse
histrionics of Reflections in a Golden
Eye and The Masseur by Brilliante
Mendoza. I first saw John Huston’s Reflections
when I was 14 and obsessed with all things Carson McCullers (she wrote the
source novel). It is an extraordinary febrile work with simmering themes of
adultery, latent homosexuality, sadism, voyeurism and self-mutilation. Quite a
brew. The film over does the melodrama by throwing Marlon Brando and Elizabeth
Taylor into the mix but it still packs quite a punch, even now. Brando’s creepy
stalking of a lovesick soldier on a army base. Taylor’s wanton blowsy sexuality
and sexual demeaning of her husband Brando. In one scene she slashes his face
with a riding crop. Her current lover’s wife is so depressed she cuts her
nipples off with garden shears after the death of her baby. I kid you not. Her
only solace is the overweening attentions of her effeminate Philippine houseboy
Anacleto. The film is preposterous in many ways, but the Southern pent up
atmosphere and the dreaminess of some of the scenes are very striking and no
one does aggressive sexual violence quite like Taylor in full flow. There is
cruelty and delight in her humiliation of her husband. Brando glowers and
sneers and Huston directs with unblinking surreal eyes. Glass and mirrors
reflect and distort. Nature consumes. A very strange film indeed.
The Masseur is a more straightforward drama about a
young man working in a Manila sex parlour. The main character is mainly silent
throughout as he experiences the challenging realities of the sex trade. It is
a static film, claustrophobic and oddly compelling. The flesh on show
glistening in cubicles, kissed and kneaded by the boys is contrasted with the
main character’s rural home life. It has a documentary feel and very different
in tone of course from the steamy melodrama of Reflections and La Taylor who at
one utters the immortal line: ‘…Have you ever been collared, dragged outside and
thrashed by a naked woman?’ Fabulous.
Seeing
both these films in the light of fragrance development is a bizarre experience.
But the images float across the scent; southern gothic, hothouse melodrama,
sensual desires, transgression, lingerie fondling and the unraveling of
Elizabeth Taylor’s Hair.
But there
is an innocence to the fragrance, a gentle heart. In Reflections… the houseboy Anacleteo ministers kindness and dreams
of love. He almost hovers in the fragrance, as a softy sweet fruity tropical
note….
Fils de Dieu is a constant delight as it unfolds on the
skin, the collection of ingredients moving from arranged details to a beautiful
cascade of delicately harmonised flavours and sensations. One of the most
distinctive aspects of Asian cuisine is the aroma of clashing and complimentary
flavouring blended together in harmony to produce the balance of sweet, sour,
salt, spice etc. Schwieger pulls this off with aplomb, taking green succulents,
spices, the spicy musks of sexual liaisons, gourmand notes of cooking and the
vanillic and amber echoes of classic oriental fragrances. All this is warmed
through by a gorgeous inhalation of the steam infused rice and jasmine accord that
makes Fils de Dieu so humid and
addictive on the skin.
It is
very much a fragrance setting standards and new perceptions of how we perceive
ingredients. We are now long used to kitchen notes in our perfumes. But they
are often clumsily executed with little thought as to how they might actually
come off the skin and interact with our senses. Many modern scents, niche or
otherwise often have a somewhat desperate air of shock value about them, eager
to draw us in with blood notes, semen, milk, concrete, fur etc. Now, while some
of these are undeniable striking and some even smell rather beautiful, many are
the perfumed equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes, a parade of scented
transparency that will never stand the test of time. I am still amazed that
people still fall for the Iso-e-Super nonsense swirling around Molecule 01, the
concept it works with your own skin and adapts etc…. In fact you just reek of
Iso-E-Super and you know what, it’s a nasty thin rusty scent that does no one
any favours. What I love about Fils de
Dieu is the Michelin star level of attention to culinary detail and complimentary
aspects of cinematic sexual surrealism, the filters laid over the notes to achieve
the final melding of contrasting layers.
It does take
a few wearings to appreciate its beauty and strangeness. I get a lot of
complements when I wear it, people leaning in to inhale me, sometimes a little
too close….. It does have oddness and compulsion and needs the heat of the skin
to open up the gorgeous rice/jasmine accord. It is the unexpected that makes it
so desirable, the oscillation between genders, a blurring of the lines. This is
something I really like in the work of Schwieger. He knows how to throw a
scented curveball. He often cites Pina
Bausch as a huge passion and influence. Sadly she died in June 2009, but the
Tanztheater Wuppertal she founded in 1972 still tours the world with her
repertoire. Her work is preoccupied with the often stormy interactions between
the sexes, the struggles to love and hate and live alongside one another.
This
weird clashing and contrasting sinuous harmony is a feature of Schwieger’s
perfumery. Eau des Merveilles, Lipstick Rose, Womanity for Mugler, his fragrances for Sylive Gantier at Atelier
Cologne all have a sense of conflict running through them, elements that seem
ill at ease with their fragranced companions. The unsettling salty caviar
aspect of Womanity, the futuristic oceanic
amber of Eau des Merveilles and in Fils de Dieu it is the slide and kiss of
rice, aromatics and musky animalics that really stops you in your tracks.
But
Schwieger is a master of opposites and stylistic surrealism. His trademark is
the unexpected, the little eye-catching detail, the glittering crystal animal
left behind at a crime scene. He keeps a firm but delightfully free hand on his
compositions. His blending is inspired and his structuring beautiful. Oh and his
drydowns are just gorgeous. Fils de Dieu
is one of the original and striking fragrances I have worn in years. Every time
I wear it I am struck again by the metallic, sexual drop of the notes onto my
skin. It has pungency and great jungle beauty, rich with steamy filmic
atmospherics. I am nearly through my first bottle already, it is so moreish. I
love a scent you can inhale and almost eat off your skin.
Click on the link below for more info on Etat Libre D'Orange:
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