I have so often said how little I like the approach of Etat Libre d’Orange, that I sound like a schoolmarmish prude, so I will shut up about the name of this perfume and not even translate it, in case I get cranky again and start ranting. Let us just look at the perfume.
My quest for violet-rose scents has been successful on several occasions already: I love Sonoma Scent Studio Lieu de Reves and To Dream, Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose has turned my head and there is the Grande Dame of rose-violets: Guerlain Aprés L’Ondée.
Putain des Palaces was created in 2006 by Natalie Feisthauer and includes notes of rose absolute, violet, leather, lily of the valley, mandarin, ginger, rice powder, amber and animalic notes.
If I didn’t know this was by EldO, I would not guess it at all. Putain des Palaces is a very elegant and refined composition centering on the classic lipstick accord of powdery rose and shy violet, bolstered by a soft leather note and a cloud of rice powder furthering the cosmetic scent association.
I find nothing in this perfume that corresponds with its name and accompanying artwork, it is perfectly tame (although I would not use that word for it if it weren’t for the presentation that suggest something a lot wilder).
Putain des Palaces has outstanding sillage and tenacity and I have to conclude that nothing about it bothers me but the name. I just wish the leather note would been a bit more pronounced, which would have made it stand out more as a unique creation. As it is, it doesn’t compel me to seek it out, since I am happy with the perfumes in this genre I already have.
Putain des Palaces doesn’t add anything new or particularly interesting to eclipse those “Lipstick” fragrances I already know and love, but I can appreciate its beauty and had it been the first rose-violet perfume I had tried, things might well be different.
Unfortunate name or not.
Olfactoria's Travels 
I too never wanted to seek out perfumes from this house as I was shocked by the marketing (yes, I know, the American prude here). Having said that, a sample of Putain des Palaces came my way and I just had to have it! In all honesty i actually find the name entertaining now and when someone asks what I am wearing I smile and tell them. I find this perfume very different to Lipstick Rose and Apres L’Ondee and am happy to have it in my collection.
We are on the same page when it comes to EldO’s brand image, apparently. Prudes unite! 😉
Putain de Palaces is lovely, good to hear you like it.
Even though the marketing can be a bit puerile, There are many scents in the ELdO range that are well worth investigating.
Have you ever tried – Rossy de Palma’ s eau de projection, Tom of Finland or Rien ?.
The only EldO I really liked so far is Like This (Tilda Swinton), it is beautiful, and lacks the usual EldO visual treatment. I just never get around to trying the others, there are so many perfumes whose names don’t put me off and Secretions Magnifiques did the rest… 😉 Although I’m sure there are many good ones in the line.
It’s been a while since I tried this scent, but I do still remember an odd plastic note that really put me off. In fact, as I have yet to find a perfume in the EdLO line that really captures my attention; for me EdLO is more about image than scent, which is wrong on many levels. I do hope they prove me wrong at some point though, and having just read Chris’ comment I do remember quite liking Rossy de Palma (and the imagery is perfectly decent too!).
Tara complained about plastic too, if I remember correctly, fortunately it is not very pronounced on me, but I know what you mean.
The new Fils de Dieu sounds quite nice, I must say, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to smell it, when I come across it , I will though.
Ha! We reviewed the same one on the same day- I got some really carnal notes from it, but I was wearing it in tropical heat, outside, so I probably smelled a little carnal myself! I did really like PdP, though, just like you did!
I just scooted over to PST – love your mini-reviews!
It is not carnal on me at all, am I missing something? Not that I am complaining… 🙂
I thought the whiff of skank was coming from the perfume, I hope it wasn’t me! (Jumps in shower….)
Definitely not you Marla! Perecptions on this one obviously vary as B seems to get all the prettiness and none ofthe skank that a lot of people at the Perfume Lovers London meetup said they got. I think Katie described it as “shower day plus 2”. I got more of a blast of curry spice than skank in the opening but maybe some people percieve that as skank. That rice powder, rose and violet is positively gorgeous though.
Must be my “magic skin”! 😉
I’m glad I don’t get the sweaty parts…
Now we’ve got a “skank factor” discussion rolling on PST, too! So we’ll all have to spray some people on the street (or sand dune in my case), sniff them and rank the skank, and do some serious research. I want graphs and charts!
Graphs and charts – where is Undina? She is the expert in that area.
It’s not just you! I find the musk in this HIGHLY skanky (in a very good way), in fact the dirty musky drydown is my favorite part, the top notes are a little too sweet for me.
Birgit, another rose-violet you might want to try, if you haven’t already, is Une Rose Vermeille…
URV is a beauty, I did try and review it, thanks Elisa.
These are on my must try list but which to choose???? So far the most appealing is Jasmin et Cigarettes probably because I can guess what it smells like. 🙂
anrdrea
Try these ones – Archives 69 – Tom of Finland (never mind the name, great unisex saffron suede scent) – Vraie Blonde – Rossy de Palma – Rien (great leather – a sort of crude mishmash of Bandit/Knize 10).
Also, if you go to Escentual website you can get a sample pack of all 26 ELdO scents and with this you will receive a voucher code that will give you £24.95 off any full bottle purchase from the ELdO range.
Thank you for your helpful suggestions Chris, I am on it with the sample pack.
I’ll add Like This to the list of perfumes Chris suggested.
Ordering the sample pack right now, will check that your suggestion is in there Birgit, thank you.:-)
Here, another one put off by the parfum names/marketing of ELd’O. So much so that the only scent I tried so far was Like this – Tilda can’t make it wrong, she’s my hero.
Very true! Tilda is amazing and so is Like This.
This is lovely, but I found the dry down, at least on me, a little boring and vanilla. Maybe I need to try it a third time. Just wasn’t that special. But my favorites from ELdO are Jasmin et Cigarette (full bottle, plz) and Vrai Blonde.
This is probably why I prefer Lipstick Rose to Putain.
I think I will try Jasmin et Cigarettes soon, it gets so many recommendations.
Oh, I’m so glad others are put off by ELdO’s marketing. I should try this, but haven’t, mostly due to the name. I will second Chris’ recommendation for Archives 69. I was given a sample, loved it, and purchased a full bottle. It is not a big sillage scent, which is nice. It is more of a warm aura, that I forget about, then smell something nice, and sniff my wrist, and realize it’s Archives.
I just haven’t figured out what to tell others I’m wearing if asked. Knowing me, I’ll brazen it out, and say thanks for asking, just tell them the title, and smile sweetly 😀 Be well.
I feel so prissy when I say I’m put off by EldO’s branding, but I just can’t find it funny or in the least appealing.
Archives sounds very nice indeed.
Be well too, hemlocksillage!
It’s very junior high school humour so it didn’t appeal to me, either- but I’m glad that this week I finally got past the names and PR and tried the ‘fumes. It’s a good line.
If you say so, I’m sure I will like a few too, we are scent sisters after all!
I’m having trouble posting a comment on blogger blogs today, which is why I could comment on your PST post, sorry!
This is my next purchase lined up from ELdO
Contrastingly, I love ELdO’s marketing, it’s playful, crude, an a breath of fresh air in the all too serious industry.
Putain des Palaces is a fantastic refined fragrance just as you said and the violets are the perfect blend of powdery, fragrant, and not too “parma violets” as to be overwhelmingly sweet.
Have you tried “Geste” by Humiecki and Graef? I think you’d reall enjoy it 😀 It’s a beautiful violet, cashmere fragrance.
Thank you for the tip, smellythoughts! Geste goes onto the to try list.
I haven’t tried any out of the ELd’O lineup yet. Like you, the marketing is not my style, which has moved this brand further down the list. Like This sounds interesting but I haven’t gotten to it yet.
It is sad that so many are put off by the brand image, but I guess just as many people find Chanel staid and old-fashioned, for example… (just to be clear, I don’t). 🙂
This one is very well done but I fail to feel particularly enthusiastic about it, I think it smells slightly flat on my skin, which is a shame because on paper and other people it smells like hot, sweaty bodies covered in perfume.
Overly enthusiastic I’m not either. Those sweaty bodies are cropping up again…hmm.
Hmmm… there’s nothing wrong with the odd sweaty body or two 😛
Absolutely. 🙂
In a hotel in Berlin, my thoughts exactly! But I like it for that.
Depending on my mood, I don’t terribly mind the marketing angle. I don’t love it, but it hasn’t put me off trying the scents. It’s also helped to teach me how suggestible i am, and it’s hard to separate the fragrance from the marketing images and text that accompany!
I liked this fragrance a lot, *almost* enough to snag a FB when Carol was liquidating her boutique (over at WAFT), but since I already had Citizen Queen in my collection, I resisted the urge. Not that they’re identical in any way, only that I have only rarely the occasion or desire to wear the rose/violet combo 🙂
However, i am glad that you overcame your revulsion to give PdP a try! 😉
I have enough in my collection on the rose-violet front as well, so I’m not tempted.
Which is your favorite EldO perfume?
So far, it’s “Like This,” although I really liked that Vraie Blonde smelled like cookies…
Oh, yes. The cookie perfume… *goes looking for baked goods*
I’m not sure if my original post posted, so B, feel free to delete! I reviewed this a while back in my blog which the help of my husband; we concur that it smells like me – so even though I think about a bottle of it, I’m not sure I really need it! LOL
oops “with” not “which” – and to think it’s mid-day and I’m still not fully awake!
Oh, I know those days… 🙂
It’s lovely to find something that smells like you – but isn’t it too bad it is called Putain de Palace? That would totally ruin my enjoyment of finding a “me” perfume. Sorry, I’m projecting my name issues onto you. 🙂
LOL! No worries – it smells like me meaning it smells like my b.o. but sweeter! And actually I love that name – but then again, I’m so an oddball.
That’s good then! 🙂 You are a totally lovely oddball!
I agree about the name. It’s off-putting, but “Archives 69” is intriguing. I am going to put a sample set on my long list. I lived in an area with many Spanish-speaking people, and that ugly word is not a joke.
I agree. A perfume with such a name would have to be extraordinary for me to actually buy it.
I got a small decant as an extra gift from a swap on perfume possee. I fell in love with it the moment I sprayed it on my arm. I was very suprised at the sweaty level this perfume has on my skin. Since I am a big skank lover, this fragrance was right up my alley. This will be my next full bottle purchase as I just made a large purchase of new scents I had been trying. I can hardly wait to get my hands on the full bottle of this elegant elixir. At least the French Putain de Palaces sounds a little classier to me than had they just named it “palace whore”. I am suprised at some of the perfume name choices they have made-example-Tom of Finland. I am sure that most people have no idea who the real Tom of Finland is and what type of art he creates. Guess I will have to investigate what the association of the perfume make up is to its title.
I hope you get your bottle soon, dremybluz. The CandyPerfumeBoy gets a lot of traffic to his Tom of Finland review from a clientele not primarily interested in perfume. 😉
I vote with my money: so far ELdO haven’t gotten a single dollar from me – in bottles, decants or even samples. I strongly object to their names and visuals. I did try several of their scents and thought that they weren’t bad. But I will not buy them.
I’m with you, Undina. I don’t see myself buying an EldO fragrance any time soon.
Does this mean you won’t do our Skank O’ Graphs N’ Charts?? I’m not so good at those. 😉
I’m always in for a good chart/graph! (as long as I do not have to pay royalties to ELdO 😉 ).
Oh dear. I am one of those who don’t know what Tom of Finland references. I think I am afraid to look it up.
Lol, don’t do it at work… 🙂
I’m not impressed or particularly amused by their packaging or ”themes” either, but I truly love 2 of their perfumes (Vraie Blonde and Jasmin et Cigarette). I will probably buy a bottle of both. Testing ELdO became, inadvertently, an exercise in just focusing on the scent. Obviously, the packaging is/can be an important part of the whole experience. We perfumistas all certainly have those iconic bottles in our collections! Sampling ELdO caused me to learn something important about myself: I can actually get past a scent’s bottle, as well as its reputation and context, if I love it.
That is a good lesson to learn, and if ever a line was ideal for splitting without getting the bottle or buying a decant, it is EldO. 😉
Dear, I remember having read somewhere that it is quite similar to Citizen Queen (which I own and wear a lot). How do you think it compares?
Cheers,
Caro
I don’t think they are very similar, aside from the rose-violet accord. Citizen Queen is much darker, the leather makes it so interesting, there is nothing of this kind of toughness in Putain de Palace.
Thank you! I will make sure I try it
I haven’t tried this in forever, so my opinion is somewhat suspect, but I remember finding it discordant in some way, along similar lines to the way I do CdG Daphne, for example. The curried spice accord maybe? The hint of skank amplified? It didn’t mesh together and wasn’t tame or pretty – just weird! Can’t remember about a plastic note, but if there is one I usually pick up on it! JPG MaDame, here’s looking at you… : – )
I’ve experienced on some wearing that PdP kind of falls apart a bit, but I didn’t include that after all, because most of the time it behaves like I said above. Maybe that is what you experienced?
Knowing me, if it can do “in die Hose”, it will!
That should have been “go”, not “do”. Silly iPhone again… ! And yes, I remember it as being neither one thing or another.
I actually love ELdO’s branding, because my sense of humour is childish and crude. I’ll admit that I’m not terribly refined in that aspect. =) and Putain des Palaces is one of my favorites from the line – it’s deliciously skanky and beautiful all at once.
(Admittedly, I do sometimes wish that ELdO made non-labelled, no-name versions of their fragrances because I do understand that people would be terribly turned off by their image and would ignore the lovely juice!)
You should try Bijou Romantique if you can. I think you’d enjoy it. Archives 69 is also worth getting your hands on, as well as Jasmin et Cigarettes!
Hi Joey!
I am interested in Bijou Romantique, it sounds nice (and looks quite inoffensive 😉 ). Thanks for the suggestions!