Jasmin et Cigarette is one of ELdO’s earliest works, which fascinates according to the remarkable trick of clashing the sacred and the profane, already contained in its name. It confronts the aesthetic and moral sensibilities that prescribe how we should – and shouldn’t – smell, reminding us that the line dividing the sacred from the profane is an arbitrary one. That said, Jasmin smells fantastic - its tender and waxy white petals are infused with the softly sweet and ashy smoke of tobacco, fused with the blushing and ripe warmth of apricot, all festooned in a nest of sunwarmed hay. This is one big narcotic effect, a dizzyingly good length of realistic jasmine trailing along humid heat and air - its radiance is marvellous. Eau de Protection is an exaggerated scent, as a dominant rose note erupts, forming a larger-than-life image of the flower, tracing its petals down to its stem still connected to the earth. It is shaded precisely, with notes of black pepper, ginger, patchouli, and cumin. One rose becomes many; it is a symphony in multiplicity. A fistful of roses - to be pricked by thorns - the scent of pure strength and resolve.
Fat Electrician is a remarkable cult classic vetiver - loved for its interplay of smokiness and nuttiness - camouflage colours and bittersweet earthy tones. The vetiver note is a chameleon, but in Fat Electrician, its qualities are honest and true - deep roots crisscross with myrrh, olive leaf, chestnut, both elevated and grounded: an experience in scent. While The Ghost in the Shell blurs the natural and the cybernetic, human softness and cool metallic sheen. Milk and soap, yuzu and vinyl: for many, The Ghost in the Shell offers a bold feeling of comfort with a futuristic boldness; slightly unplaceable yet strikingly familiar. A glorious postmodern mishmash that works all too well.
Return to purity with You or Someone Like You: crushed mint leaves and long stretches of grass, the sizzling sharpness of grapefruit and the serenity of jasmine, full of bright and citrusy hedione, all of which are rounded with white musks. This fragrance feels like a revival; a health tonic in scent - it instantly lifts and perks up, radiating like sunlight on a cloudless, blue sky day. And if dark and heavy stormclouds begin to encroach, you’ve reached Hermann a Mes Cotes, an olfactory shadow by your side - evoking dark blues and greys. It is moody and mysterious, with the zing and crunchy burn of pepper that pierces through the atmospheric scent of earth and rain. Hermann is a classic rose and patchouli fragrance in its heart, tweaked with dramatic effects.
