New Fragrance: Etat Libre D’Orange “You or Someone Like You” (Chandler Burr and Caroline Sabas) 2017

Chandler Burr and Etienne de Swardt of Etat Libre D'Orange

What does a L.A. woman smell like? In 2009, perfume critic and author Chandler Burr wrote a novel, “You or Someone Like You”,whose female protagonist is the muse for a new fragrance from Etat Libre D’Orange. Chandler Burr  is the Creative Director and the perfumer  is Caroline Sabas.

According to Mr. Burr: “A few years ago I wrote a novel called You Or Someone Like You set in Los Angeles. Its central character is a woman, Anne Rosenbaum, who lives in the Hollywood Hills with her husband, Howard, a movie studio executive. Like so many of the homes up in the fantastical curves and canyons of the Hills, they they look down on LA’s downtown skyscrapers and the concrete ribbon of the 101 freeway, across mid- Wilshire and Robertson, the glass towers of Century City, and, on clear days, over the 405 to Santa Monica and the placid, blue Pacific. And always the palm trees, imported and planted in LA in the early 20th century, ‘just as I am an import’, Anne observes, ‘now indigenous.’ Anne is English, born in Hammermith, London. He continues, "As many have observed, Los Angeles is not a city. It is a state of mind. A strange amalgam of places and languages. Los Angeles is rivers of cement highways and infinite strips of asphalt, traffic, and, despite or because of it all, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places on earth, a natural beauty made by nature and molded by people, cobalt sky and the greens and tans of the desert parks, ocean fog, the white and delicate pale yellow jasmine and honeysuckle flowers that grow up parking signs reading ‘Permit Parking Only Violators Will Be Towed…This scent is very specific. When Etienne de Swardt approached me about creative directing a fragrance whose “You Or Someone Like You is not the ‘scent of LA’ or ‘the smell of the Hollywood Hills captured.’ It is not one of those olfactory synecdoches. It is, on the other hand, stylistically and in its technical construction what a Los Angeles woman would wear in my view. Caroline and I discussed this at each step during the creation process. It is contemporary, 21st century. It is LA, whatever that means, though in part it means the norms a scent would follow in a meeting at one of the agencies near Wilshire, at a studio, at a lunch in Bel Air or dinner off Beverly Drive. (The raw materials are completely irrelevant. The work is the work. If you need to know what it’s made of, don’t wear it; You is not for you)."

Via Etat Libre D'Orange

Parfum Natural Spray 50 ml 85 €

Eau de Parfum Natural Spray 100 ml 125 €

 Available March 1, 2017

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15 comments

  • A fragrance inspired by a novel sounds super interesting!!! I wonder if it is any good? NYC over here 🙂

  • Having lived off and on in LA, I am very intrigued by the description of this scent. I will seek this out for sampling. Thanks for the interesting review.

  • My daughter lived in LA for awhile and had a place in the hills. Luckily, I was out there many times to visit and I agree, it is a beautiful place. I was able to transport myself back there while reading this article. Funny, once when we were out to dinner, a woman’s fragrance captured my attention, I believe she had said it was custom made for her – it was super special. I actually think since then, I’ve always kept that in the back of my fragrance file, to hopefully one day smell something that was as wonderful as that was. So I can relate to the thought “like a woman in LA would smell.” sounds like a gem!

  • Haha, that last line from Burr is super pretentious! But having lived in LA for a little while, I would like to smell this. I had no idea he wrote a novel.

  • “The raw materials are completely irrelevant. The work is the work. If you need to know what it’s made of, don’t wear it; You is not for you.”

    how supremely arrogant and off-putting (of the man, that is.) it is really not up to anyone else to decide who the is for. that’s the thing about art, yes? it’s between the piece and the beholder .

  • Part of me is intrigued but mostly put off. The idea of creating a perfume for a character is intriguing. Mr. Burr pretentious tone is not; to say the raw materials are irrelevant and if you need to know what they are it isn’t for you.
    I look forward to any EDlO creation.
    No idea he wrote a novel

  • I have been seeing this perfume house recently.
    I am yet to get any from this house, hopefully one day.

  • You piqued my interest. I am fond of scents which use place-as-muse rather than person-as-muse. This scent sounds like it could be either the familiar fragrance of a person or the scent of a special place. Perhaps it is both, or neither. I recently visited Silver Lake and later hiked up the canyon to the Hollywood sign. The place-scent of Los Angeles is on my mind.

    The blue iris in lieu of the usual ELd’O orange and blue logo is a clever wink. Did Anne or someone else from her story have blue eyes?

    It seems the color blue is having a moment in relation to fragrance – Histoires de Parfums This is Not A Little Blue Bottle, Miu Miu L’eau Bleue, and Hermes Eau des Merveilles Bleue come to mind. And I’m reminded of Olfactive Studio’s Close Up as well. Or am I imagining something that really isn’t there? I wonder . . .

  • I am quite happy that I am not the only one who thinks Mr. Burr to be pretentious.

    As I have a look at any release by Etat Libre d’Orange, I will also try “You….” but I have no high hopes for this one. Chantal’s description is scary.

    But what was to be expected by someone who doesn’t like Kouros?

    I am a bit disappointed by Etat Libre d’Orange, to put it mildly.