Etat Libre d'Orange

For the one you will never understand
Après des milliers de jours, son parfum.

« My mother, she was an anomaly, she was brilliant, she was loved but she paid a huge price. » from an Interview with Lisa Simone, in What Happened Miss Simone ?

« I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, it can only be attributable to human error. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye. » HAL 9000 iconic quote in 2001 : A Space Odyssey.

These remarks could summarize our new perfume, a marriage of Nina Simone and Stanley Kubrick. This fragrance is dedicated to them, to celebrate their talents, their deviations from the norm, from the theoretical value, from the expected. This disparity comes with an excess, from a « computer malfunction », forcing the dose on the iris and musk, and this sublime jeopardy has sprung up to become a perfume, carved by Daniela Andrier. A singularity. A difference. This perfume was necessary.

From the bottom of the matter, rise up. 

MERGER OF THE MATTER, BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT.

It is a night of pale moonlight, a night toward the end of the 20th century, a night when the old world is ending and the new one is beginning. It is a night when one trembles to boldly lower the sacred cross against the heart, to aid in the passage to fatherhood.
So, as a crucifix, that night I pick up Hyperion, a novel by Dan Simmons. This is a masterful science fiction saga that celebrates the infinite legend of the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was a 20th-century researcher, paleontologist, theologian and philosopher.
And I read, pacified, until the reflections of the dawn, until the first golden rays of the East. I read the future of man, the celebration of transhumanism and the qualitative leap of humanity enhanced by machine. I have rarely loved a book this much, I have rarely loved a thinker this much.

I read that night what a man thought he saw in the tombs of time.

I am a lover of words in the service of materials when they come together to make poetry in the bottom of our bottles; thus, a few years ago, I bring up the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to one of the last living vestiges of the triumphant 20th century, and I ask him: - "Then Teilhard de Chardin, precursor of genius?" A look, a silence and for the answer four unexpected words, four words whispered by my father: "GHOST IN THE SHELL".
This is the act of birth that makes the spirit of perfume. The rest is poetry to live on the skin.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin died in 1955, but his spirit continues to travel. This fragrance extends it through an alliance with the Japanese artist Shirow Masamune to transcend the spirit of Earth.

By mixing biotech and natural materials, this perfume silently celebrates the wake of the future and also whispers of a day to come, by providence or chance, when humanity is reunited and organized. A day when all consciousness is summoned by the infosphere to constitute a superior being and pass from the inert to the living. As the molecules assemble to make the living, we will then make a qualitative leap that becomes the starting point and arrival of transhumanism.

This perfume is the future. It comes to us from the 20th century.

The Ghost in the Shell, a perfume that speaks of the human phenomenon and its paradox, a perfume to wear on oneself ab libitum, at one’s pleasure. A perfume as a propagation towards the other, that makes you the axis and the arrow of evolution; modern, indeed! From the bottom of the matter, rise up.

Etienne de Swardt

Perfume is soul, soul is perfume.  

 In One Thousand and One Nights, there is this wonderful expression for addressing a loved one: to say “soul of my soul,” signifying the emptiness of living without one's love.

   I remember Aladdin's warm voice - crackling out of a record player on a 45 rpm - speaking to Badroulboudour.  He calls her "my princess, soul of my soul." I was 7 years old at the time, and I asked my mother for the meaning of soul.

  She replied, "There is no single definition. It is an invisible presence that links us to the divine, a little like the Vanilla trail of the perfume that you want to follow. The soul travels to infinity in space and time and connects us to the whole. It is a fragment of that which is beautiful and perfect in each of us, that returns us to heaven and remains on earth when we disappear. Perfume continues the presence of this fragment, and the soul proceeds in the same way."

A few years later, through the sustained reading of One Thousand and One Nights, I learned that the relationship to the body is nothing without a relationship to the soul, though for some, sensuality seemed to be an excellent substitute for the soul. To embrace each other could be an innovative way of instilling in each other a drop of the white and cosmic soul that flowed into the primordial ocean before the world came into being.

  We have here a perfume that speaks of the fire-god of Persia and the gods of India, the worship of offerings, Mesopotamia, milk and clarified butter to honor the gods. And to remember, by a wake in the air, the foaming whiteness of the soul that comes from everything. Here, perfume is soul, soul is perfume. A creamy explosion, where musk intermingles with iris butter and transmits the powerful balm of vanilla, followed by the friction of Tonka against benzoin.

By the musk I remain.

For every epoch, for every era, there are remarkable people.

In classical mythologies, there were the demigods, the offspring of a god and a human, or a mortal who was raised to divine status. An ancient Greek poet used the word demigod as a synonym for hero. They demonstrated strength and power, a willingness to face challenges and confront danger.

In the New World, there were the explorers, who discovered unknown lands. They were heroes too, battling forces of nature to find new territories. And throughout history — scientists, artists, composers, entertainers — all heroes in their own way.

New heroes are born every day. There is an element, or an event, or a circumstance, or maybe just a quirk in their personalities that changes them, empowers them, enables them to transcend the ordinary. They believe in something different, something better. They want to change the rules, break the rules, alter the status quo, in whatever grand or small way they find meaningful. They are on a journey, and maybe it’s the effort alone that makes them remarkable.

For some, their efforts bring fame and glory. Many others remain unknown. But they cannot — they should not — be ignored. These are our people — the remarkable citizens of Etat Libre d’Orange, the Orange Free State. The “un” people — uncompromising, unexpected, unconventional, unpredictable. We salute them, we honor them, by offering the extraordinary fragrance they deserve.

Remarkable People.
You know who you are.

The most wanted scent made from the unwanted.

By virtue of my mother, I am the son of a forgotten coast, far away in New Caledonia. At the mouth of the Ngoye live the Borindi, who have known since the twilight of the gods the great principle of harmony with Mother Nature: to take from her no more than is necessary while preserving for tomorrow. They understand the future of mankind, and in the shade of the niaouli tree and jacarandas in bloom, they guide our first steps into this new direction for Etat Libre d’Orange.

In the early years of this new millennium, when my children were young and I was a hopeful thirty-year-old, I took them to see an animated film called Titan AE. I learned by heart the introduction, which went something like this:

“Once in a while, man unlocks a secret so profound that it can change the universe: fire, electricity, atom splitting. At the dawn of the 21st century, we invented the Titan program . . . ”

There is a jumble of romantic and titanic science fiction poetry that emerges from the slow, sure, and inevitable rocking of wastewaters in the industrial cycle. We want to make this perfume a messenger, in service not only to the survival of the species which results from seduction, but above all in service to the planet where our own miasmas must reflect beauty.

We believe that a new post-religious “jihad” is approaching, coming from an often disillusioned and polluting West, and echoing a new animistic era. Those who have committed crimes against the environment are repenting, and democracies are acknowledging nature as the sacred focal point, meant to be shared. The beliefs of the primitive and ancient tribes are back, and demand our full allegiance. This perfume will carry a universal message: that which is dirty must reflect the beautiful, “…and wash me clean of the bluish wine stains and the splashes of vomit, Carrying away both rudder and anchor.” (Arthur Rimbaud, The Drunken Boat.)

Les Fleurs du Déchet represents a passage to the adulthood of Sécrétions Magnifiques. It is a counter-revolution for Etat Libre d’Orange, still noisy and disruptive, but ultimately functional.

Givaudan, Ogilvy and Etat Libre d’Orange have created a three-fold company in the service of Mother Nature, to offer her a bouquet of forgiveness and let everyone know – loudly and quickly – that soon it will be too late.

Dear world: Do not throw anything away because at the bottom of our trash lies the fermented distillation of great love. The garbage trucks hold flowers that can still bleed, the peels and rinds that can still give. The noxious exhalations have honey notes that can merge with the earth. And there are so many floating concretions, the trash that is thrown into the sea, and the natural waste, the ambergris, mystical symbols, the attitudes of primitive tribes – these must now be reprocessed.

To paraphrase and distort Alan Paton: Cry, my beloved planet, for the unborn child; let him not love the earth too deeply, for it is slipping away.

So before it’s too late, let us (s)pray to the god of waste, our dear lord of leftovers.

End of sermon. This is a messianic fragrance (in natural spray, of course.)